Zinwave CEO Scott Willis discusses the latest in CBRS
As the telecom industry moves to commercialize use of the 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service, the concept of sharing spectrum based on a priority access scheme could be adapted to put other valuable spectrum resources to work. And that means it’s important to get CBRS right.
“This is a clear opportunity to prove a completely different business model,” Zinwave CEO Scott Willis told RCR Wireless News in an interview. “Spectrum is not an infinite resource. If this particular business model can prove itself out, and as an industry we can prove that spectrum sharing in the way that it’s attempting to be defined today with CBRS is a very viable business model for the industry going forward, I don’t see why we wouldn’t look at other opportunities to replicate that business model and leverage that for all the participants within the mobile community collectively as a group. My perception or perspective would be that if this business model can be proven and it works well and works successfully, why wouldn’t you look to evolve it and advance it into other opportunities?”
Currently the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is considering rules that would govern licensure term and size. While that process has been somewhat protracted, industry stakeholders are testing out various CBRS use cases ahead of commercialization. The focus for Zinwave is using shared spectrum to provide private LTE networks for enterprises.
“We want to understand different enterprise verticals where CBRS can be applied…and we want to gather these learnings through these active pilots,” Willis said. After deployment and activation, “The next phase of that will be what can we learn and what can we gain once we’re fully deployed and in an active pilot environment. We’re at an exciting time. We believe that CBRS is going to be a significant market opportunity, not only for the carriers…certainly the neutral hosts…but the direct enterprise and the benefits that they’re going to get with a cellular-based private LTE connectivity environment that offers, It think, a superior user experience over traditional Wi-Fi.”
Zinwave has worked to incorporate the spectrum access system developed by Federated Wireless into its DAS product to create a turnkey enterprise solution.
