American Tower and Ruckus Networks partnered on CBRS project
With rules governing general authorized and priority access licenses settled by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, there’s significant momentum around the commercialization of the 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band. In the latest, Arris subsidiary Ruckus Networks partnered with American Tower to stand up a private LTE network at a racetrack in Phoenix, Arizona. The primary use case is supporting mobile traffic generated by race fans.
The network went live along over ISM Raceway’s opening weekend, which kicked off Nov. 9; it’s part of a larger $178 million upgrade.
Arris President of U.S. Sales, Global Marketing and Customer Operations Tim O’Loughlin said in a statement, “With our Ruckus products on-site, NASCAR fans will have better connectivity to upload and download content like videos, photos and apps–or engage in social media–allowing them to be just as fast as their favorite driver out on the race track.”
Last week CommScope agreed to acquire Arris in a $7.4 billion deal. The acquisition will mark a significant expansion of CommScope’s portfolio and will bring enterprise Wi-Fi provider Ruckus Networks into its fold.
CommScope painted a picture of lofty expectations for the combined company as a major communications and network player that would “drive profitable growth in new markets, shape the future of wired and wireless communications, and … benefit from key industry trends, including network convergence, fiber and mobility everywhere, 5G, Internet of Things and rapidly changing network and technology architectures.”
CommScope has also been focused on CBRS, partnering with Google to joint develop, deploy and operate a coastal sensor network that is one of the key pieces for enabling operations in the shared Citizens Broadband Radio Service spectrum.
The Environmental Sensing Capability network is a network of sensors to be located along the U.S. coasts; it is required in order to detect the presence of ship-borne naval radar systems which are one of the protected incumbents in the tiered spectrum-sharing framework for CBRS. The Spectrum Access Systems which coordinate spectrum access among the three tiers of users must either use data from an ESC for dynamic protection of incumbents, or use a methodology based on exclusion zones along the coasts.
