In a promising sign for large enterprise adoption of the Citizens Broadband Radio Service, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts was granted permission to conduct internal testing to see if some of its existing wireless infrastructure at its Disney resorts in Anaheim, California and Orlando, Florida, can be converted to operate under the CBRS shared spectrum rules.
According to the filing with the Federal Communications Commission, the purpose of the internal testing is to “determine functionality of a CBRS proxy developed by Siemens to allow for conversion of existing part 90 installations to operate under the CBRS rules.” Part 90 installations in an enterprise context generally refer to private land mobile radio communications.
Disney asked for permission to test within a one-kilometer radius of the Disneyland location and within a 4.8-kilometer radius of a site at Walt Disney World in Florida, using a total of 141 fixed and mobile transmitters from Siemens. The authorization from the FCC goes into effect on July 15 and runs through mid-January 2020, and the testing will be limited to the 3650-3700 MHz portion of the band so as not to interfere with incumbent naval radar systems. No Spectrum Access System vendor was specified in Disney’s application.
The Disney special temporary authority permission is separate from the recent grant to Charter Communications to test CBRS in the Los Angeles area, including in Anaheim near Disneyland. Charter intends to install approximately 200 fixed transmitters and employ up to 50 mobile transmitters during the testing, and that it will conduct capacity testing and evaluate propagation, connectivity and throughput testing, as well as assess inter-cell interference and the “compatibility and individual performance of each vendor” contributing to its test network. Its test network includes coverage of the urban Inglewood Oil Field.
In related news, Federated Wireless this week submitted to the FCC the results of its “report card” testing of its Spectrum Access System, which enables the proper sharing of access to the three-tiered CBRS spectrum. The final certification of SASes is the final piece that needs to be in place in order for initial commercial deployment of CBRS to begin. Federated said in the letter to the FCC that its SAS passed all of the more than 1,000 tests conducted by the Institute for Telecommunications Sciences. The actual test results were redacted from the public filing because they are considered proprietary company information. The submission by Federated is aimed at jump-starting the review of those results while the official test report from ITS is still in process.
Federated said that its submission of its report card “should enable the Commission, NTIA, and the United States Department of Defense to initiate review of the results of laboratory testing of the Federated Wireless SAS while ITS prepares the … report” and that once the official test results are sent from ITS, it will supplement them as needed for the final review in order to receive its certification as a SAS administrator.
