Six wireless technology leaders announced the launch of the Citizens Broadband Radio Service(CBRS) Alliance to develop, market and promote LTE-based solutions utilizing the shared spectrum of the 3.5 GHz band.
The six companies - Google's parent company Alphabet, Federated Wireless, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm and Ruckus Wireless (now part of Brocade) - believe that access to spectrum in the 3.5 GHz frequency band will be critical to meet rapidly expanding wireless data demands. More recently, Google has sought a special license from FCC to test wireless broadband technologies in the 3.5GHz band across 24 US locations.
In February, the companies announced their commitment to build an ecosystem of industry participants and make LTE-based solutions in the CBRS band widely available. This followed the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling for CBRS, which opened 150 MHz of spectrum (3550-3700 MHz) for commercial use.
With the impending allocations of 3400-3600 MHz for IMT in several countries, there is increased demand for LTE solutions worldwide, creating economies of scale. The Alliance believes that LTE-based solutions in the CBRS band, utilizing shared spectrum, can enable both in-building and outdoor coverage and capacity expansion at massive scale.
The Alliance will work towards LTE CBRS field trials in the second half of this year and is developing an official certification process towards successful deployments of CBRS infrastructure.
Neville Meijers, vice president of small cells for Qualcomm Technologies, and chairman of the board for the CBRS Alliance
There is ever-growing demand for LTE-based solutions in 3.5 GHz bands and expansion of the wireless footprint. Working together, the CBRS Alliance aims to enable the entire industry to address demand by expanding the capacity of new technologies.
Stefan Pongratz, senior director, carrier economics and mobile RAN market research at Dell'Oro Group
With 80 percent of the data consumed indoors and 95 percent of the radio access network (RAN) Capex allocated to the outdoors, new solutions that produce negligible interference with legacy macro and Wi-Fi systems and are inherently designed to support multiple operators will likely play an essential role to normalize the location asymmetry between data consumption and mobile infrastructure investment.
