The CBRS band in the US is at some vague risk of being refarmed as part of Trump’s OBBB act; but you can’t just tear it up and start again, says the OnGo Alliance – when so much has been spent, so much has been deployed, and so much much of the country’s industrial engine room relies on it.
In sum – what to know:
New legislation – could auction CBRS spectrum, risking billions in investment, and pioneering work to show the world how private and shared spectrum access can be done.
Total disruption – relocation would be costly and disruptive, with viable alternative bands available that could meet 6G needs without undoing a decade of progress.
Alliance protest – a combination of fixed wireless providers and big industrial users are counter-lobbying against the standard narrative about more carrier spectrum.
RCR Wireless wrote yesterday (August 13) about how government lobbying by big mobile operators in India might rob local enterprises of the chance to license their own spectrum to own their own private networks, and how their efforts might preclude any chance the country has to create a CBRS-style facility for shared and private spectrum. Well over in the US, in the home of CBRS, operators and regulators might be readying to skittle all of the good work they have achieved over the last five years (since its launch in 2020), to establish such a pioneering system.
There’s the jeopardy, anyway – and it does seem misguided. The background is this: a section of the US president Donald Trump’s second-term tax-and-spending bill, dubbed One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA; or OBBB, or just BBB), sets out that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), with its legal authority restored as the country’s chief auctioneer, should seek to raise at least $85 billion from the sale of at least 800 megahertz of spectrum, plucked from somewhere between 1.3 GHz and 10.5 GHz. CBRS, at 3.55-3.7 GHz, is right in range.
Three hundred megahertz of spectrum will go under the hammer in the near-term, which includes a two-year listing for at least 100 megahertz of additional C-Band spectrum between 3.98-4.2 GHz. Beyond this, another 500 megahertz of federal spectrum is to be reallocated for commercial or shared usage – specifically to support “full-power commercial licensed use cases”, which effectively map to national carrier services, and which have long-time target for the CTIA carrier association. CBRS spectrum did not get formal protections in the bill.
Neither did the 5 GHz unlicensed band at 5.925-7.125 HHz, protected in a previous version of the bill, but not the final version. All of which has left both CBRS and Wi-Fi advocates decidedly uneasy. The OnGo Alliance, representing 90-odd firms in the CBRS space, is on the end of the phone, represented by Kurt Schaubach, chief technology officer at Federated Wireless, and Masoud Olfat, vice president of technology and ecosystem development at the same firm; Olfat is currently acting president at the OnGo Alliance.
They have a message: that the ecosystem that has developed around CBRS is proven, mature, and rather unique; it is delivering good value for enterprises across many industries, and it has room to develop. CBRS has justified its original billing as the ‘innovation band’, they declare. And the sheer cost and complexity to swap everything that already exists in CBRS, which is connecting communities and changing enterprises, into a brand new band is astronomically high and hard to imagine – and totally mad to make happen.
Ecosystem at scale
Olfat provides some numbers, of sorts: almost $14 billion has been spent on CBRS, he says, which includes investments in spectrum licences, network equipment, system installations, sensors and devices, and software systems; on top, about $10 billion has gone on relocating federal radars. “Add those together, just to start – and that’s a number which is critical to make this decision [about refarming the CBRS band],” he says. As well, around 420,000 CBRS transmitter devices (CBSDs; base stations and routers, effectively) have been deployed in the band.
He says: “If you assume about 25-30 percent of them are fixed CPEs, then it means a large part of the US population is currently using CBRS. And actually, if you take the total number of users in CBRS, it is equivalent to the kind of subscriber-count at one of the top US mobile operators right now. So those numbers tell you how disruptive it would be.” The last point is interesting because CBRS gets conflated (in these pages; by this hack) with enterprise cases, whereas most of it is used by mobile network operators (MNOs) and fixed wireless providers, densifying and expanding everyday cellular coverage into suburban, exurban, rural, and out-of-reach communities.
The CBRS vendor ‘ecosystem’ – network vendors, device vendors, equipment vendors; fought so hard for, which has propelled the global market for private/shared network applications and use cases – also includes the likes of Apple and Samsung, of course, which have added 3GPP ‘band n48’ compatibility to new handsets. Olfat says: “Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, JMA; they all have CBRS gear. We have a lot of CBRS-compliant DAS, and a lot of sensor makers and industrial OEMs. And these handset makers are not putting n48 into their equipment for no reason.”
Demand is high, and activity is varied and busy – is the point. Schaubach, his colleague at Federated Wireless, coordinating efforts within the OnGo Alliance regulatory working group, addresses the complexity of such a mad migratory scheme. He says: “It would be a massive undertaking – to undo what has already been done, and relocate users to a comparable band. Just to find comparable spectrum would be hard enough. But there are over a thousand operators in the band, holding spectrum that has been auctioned and licensed.”
He goes on: “CBRS is home to the most diverse license-ownership in any mobile band; scores of deployments, lots of devices. It would be incredibly difficult, and completely disruptive. But there is a plan to bring more spectrum to the industry, and so we have these competing forces: how to have enough spectrum to prepare for 6G; and how to have it with as little disruption as possible. Right now, the government is keeping a wide aperture. All we can do is to point out that CBRS is working well, serving an incredibly large base with the largest 4G/5G ecosystem of its kind.”
He adds: “It is vitally important that we continue to invest to allow CBRS to grow and flourish rather than reverse and unwind a decade’s worth of progress.” As it stands, the FCC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a bureau of the US Department of Commerce, have a schedule and a budget to study everything between 1.3 GHz and 10.5 GHz – to be evaluated and prioritized, and then repurposed (or just purposed) under an auction hammer. Does the OnGo Alliance have a view on where this extra 800 MHz range might be found?
Alternative spectrum options
“There are better options to meet the pipeline requirements,” says Schaubach. Its position will be clearer “in the next weeks”, he says. But he adds: “There is a prevailing logic around the extended C-band – above 3.98 GHz, where commercial fixed satellite services are located – that says those users are willing to compress or relocate their operations, especially as the market consolidates. So there might be an opportunity to free-up spectrum there, say. And in a far less destructive way because you’ve got a party that is willing to facilitate an easy transition.”
Similarly, there is 500 megahertz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band, at 4.4-4.9 GHz, used exclusively by federal agencies. “There are no existing commercial licenses there,” he says. “So that could be a greenfield opportunity. It is hard to say what is more or less disruptive, but we know with certainty that relocating CBRS would be disruptive.” It sounds like there are better options, at least. Is there a comms issue with CBRS? Is its value not being properly communicated? Because, as RCR Wireless (again, this hack) tends to write about it, a decent part of the US industrial engine room is engaged with shared and private CBRS spectrum, whether directly or indirectly.
Is there a job to do to harness the experiences of John Deere, or Hyundai, or Tesla – or even the Department of Defense? Schaubach responds: “Yes, and while these private deployments are a relatively small portion of overall CBRS usage – in terms of raw base-station numbers, and so on – they are an incredibly important part of what we’ve been able to achieve. And yes, there really is no easy path to find a new home for these users if a relocation was to occur. Which is a point we’ve been making as well – that the US will lose out on really vital innovation.
“And frankly, CBRS helped to lead the world in private networking and spectrum sharing. And when you look at where 6G is headed, those are the two central themes – efficient spectrum sharing, and private network capabilities. So the US has an opportunity to lead in that area. And we’ve been making that point – that we don’t want to reverse the course.” But the question is more basic than that: can the OnGo Alliance not just coach the country’s giants of Industry 4.0 to Capitol Hill, to lobby mob-handed, and louder, against the counter-lobbying by the carriers?
He responds: “They have been advocating already, those companies; same with other entities in the alliance. All the fixed wireless providers are big CBRS users, and have been closely engaged in the BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment) initiative to bring lower-cost solutions to rural communities. As this benefit-of-the-bargain round develops, fixed wireless will feature prominently. And CBRS helps to enable that. Sometimes people don’t make the connection; they don’t connect the dots – back to something like CBRS. We are creating those linkages.”
Shadow of uncertainty
Is there any risk that the opposite side – the carriers, mostly – will say to big industrial CBRS users, ‘hey, we’ll annex the spectrum, but you’ll have the same gear in the same band; we’ll serve you, so don’t worry’ – type of thing? Is that a possibility? And is there a counterargument to say that’s not the point – that these networks have been set up despite the carriers, or in spite of them, and that they exist this way because enterprises want them to exist this way – as dedicated standalone operations, which they own and manage? ‘So Mr. Carrier, you can’t just say that to them, because the whole point is that you are not involved’ – in lots of these private cases?
“I think it is the latter, really. The reason these enterprises have private networks is because they didn’t find a viable alternative from the MNOs. All of them will have looked, and concluded, either for cost or security or flexibility, that a private network is a more desirable alternative. The argument that these networks could be replaced or augmented or subsumed by MNOs is sort-of ever-present; it’s always the reality. And it could be done. But that’s not really the point; the point is private networks offer capabilities that don’t readily exist in a private MNO setup.”
Perhaps we are getting off track; but the conversation is a good one, and we should let it roll. How much is really about the existential threat to the future of CBRS, and how much is it just that uncertainty is bad for business? Because if a shadow hangs over CBRS for two years, until proper spectrum is identified for refarming, then it is harder for alliance members to draw enterprises into this ecosystem. I mean that is a problem as well, right? “The last thing we want is for companies to pull back from CBRS because of uncertainty,” responds Schaubach.
“But there is no decision; it is going to take a long time before anything is decided. And while we don’t think that there is a prospect that CBRS will be relocated, it would be many, many years off if it happened. I mean, we’re talking a decade, probably, in order to pull that off. So entities should continue to invest in it, and continue to grow their networks. That is the most important thing right now. What the economy wants is access to spectrum. The last thing it wants is for the band to lie fallow because of uncertainty around it – which we think is misplaced anyway.”
It is simplistic, but what the CBRS community needs is assurance – for the FCC to say, ‘this review is live, but this band is protected’? And the ideal scenario is that it is given right away – or in the next six months, or whatever? Is that the dream scenario, given the position now?
“That would be ideal. But the government rarely provides such definitive statements. The thing to watch for is whether there are specific indications about CBRS. We have not seen that – from the FCC or anyone else. So our message is to continue to invest, deploy, utilise the spectrum – because that will in some ways help to guarantee its future. The more it is used, the less likely it can be messed with.”
