SNS Telecom & IT's latest research report indicates that annual investments in LTE and 5G NR-based RAN infrastructure for CBRS networks will surpass $1 Billion by 2023, despite the ongoing economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After many years of regulatory, standardization and technical implementation activities, the United States' dynamic, three-tiered, hierarchical framework to coordinate shared use of 150 MHz of spectrum in the 3.5 GHz CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service) band has finally become a commercial reality. Although the shared spectrum arrangement is access technology neutral, the 3GPP cellular wireless ecosystem is at the forefront of CBRS adoption given the desirability of mid-band spectrum for both LTE and 5G NR network buildouts due its optimal blend of propagation characteristics and capacity.
Following authorization of FCD (Full Commercial Deployment) by the FCC and completion of the recent PAL (Priority Access License) auction, LTE-based CBRS network deployments are beginning to gain considerable momentum, with thousands of operational cell sites throughout the United States to support use cases as diverse as mobile network densification, FWA (Fixed Wireless Access), neutral host infrastructure, and private cellular networks for enterprises and vertical industries. In the coming years, we also anticipate the rollout of 5G NR network equipment operating in the CBRS band, which will lay the foundations for advanced application scenarios with more demanding performance requirements in terms of throughput, latency, reliability, availability and connection density – for example, industrial IoT applications such as connected production machinery, mobile robotics, AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles) and AR (Augmented Reality)-assisted troubleshooting.
The CBRS market remains largely unfazed by the economic disruption associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, with the exception of certain enterprise and vertical submarkets. SNS Telecom & IT estimates that annual investments in LTE and 5G NR-based CBRS RAN infrastructure will account for more than $300 Million by the end of 2020. Complemented by an expanding selection of CBRS-equipped end user devices, the market is further expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 52% between 2020 and 2023 to surpass $1 Billion in annual spending by 2023.
