Shared Spectrum Bands Seen as Offering a U.S. Advantage in Competing With China
Advocates of sharing in the citizens broadband radio service (CBRS) and 6 GHz bands remain concerned that parts of those bands could be reallocated for full-power licensed use, but decisions probably won’t be made for some time, Disruptive Analysis consultant Dean Bubley said Tuesday during a Broadband Breakfast webinar. Bubley and Dave Wright, policy director for Spectrum for the Future, said CBRS offers unique capabilities that many users want and that help the U.S. compete with China.
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Wright noted that CBRS provided the first “cellular-oriented” spectrum that was open to everyone. “You didn’t have to go through an FCC auction to acquire spectrum.” CBRS “really democratized cellular technologies” and offered additional opportunities for private LTE and 5G, he said. It also advanced “the art of spectrum management,” with the U.S. leading the world.
“At the moment, the focus of the FCC is on other bands,” Bubley said. There have been statements Trump administration officials “to suggest that 6 GHz, at the moment, is fine and is not going to change,” he said. “We’ll see how that goes.” The FCC is currently concentrating on the upper C band (see 2511200046) and, to a lesser extent, 4.9 GHz, he added.
CBRS advocates have work to do to ensure that policymakers understand that the band is “seen as valuable” and that disrupting it “would be problematic,” Bubley argued. Wireless ISPs, in particular, have stepped up calls to preserve CBRS (see 2512150026).
The FCC’s CBRS order established a three-tier system for sharing nearly 150 MHz of spectrum from 3.55-3.7 GHz, Wright noted. Incumbent military users “have the first rights to the spectrum,” but they don’t use it that frequently and only off the coast, he said. When they use the band, “we have to protect them.” Priority access license users have “a protected right” to 10 MHz of spectrum at the county level, he added.
Wright also said general authorized access is “available to anyone” and is “analogous” to unlicensed spectrum, though it’s technically “licensed by rule.” More than 90% of the band's use is the general-authorized access tier, he noted.
CBRS can be used in ways Wi-Fi can’t for private cellular networks, Bubley said. The networks can serve a single building, an oilfield, a port or an entire city, with service that’s “completely separate from public carrier networks,” and it also allows for the use of cameras, other IoT devices, and robotic and automated vehicles. Users can keep the data that’s collected onsite and design the network to individual requirements, including upstream and downstream capacity and security, he said.
Launching CBRS isn’t as easy as deploying Wi-Fi, though “there are a lot of companies that are trying to make it easier,” Bubley said, noting that CBRS requires design and testing, especially for business-critical applications.
The new 5G-Operational Technology Alliance recently had its initial meeting in Miami and includes major players that want to promote CBRS and private networks, Wright said. They’re using the technology “to essentially overhaul their operations, create a lot of cost efficiencies” and implement AI and automation. Members include John Deere, Cargill, BP, U.S. Steel, Georgia Pacific, the Port of Los Angeles and Miami International Airport.
Bubley also highlighted how CBRS and private networks give the U.S. advantages relative to China. The latter country is very focused on its major carriers, which are tasked with providing connectivity for state-owned companies and institutions, he said. “The U.S. is much more market-led and innovation-led. … There’s much greater emphasis on enterprises being able to run their own systems … or even communities running their own systems.”
Bubley said in arguing that China leads the world in midband spectrum for 5G, U.S. wireless carriers have counted shared spectrum there as being available for exclusive use, he said, questioning how the numbers are calculated. China is also still studying 6 GHz and there’s a lot of debate there about using part of the band as a Chinese version of CBRS, he said. “It’s not been decided,” he said. “A lot of the comparisons are a bit unreasonable.”
Chinese policymakers aren’t “big fans” of Wi-Fi, Wright said. “They don’t want everybody to be able to deploy a network” and have data that’s not monitored by the state. The U.S. has “a history of providing spectrum for innovators,” he said. “You create a playing field where people can do innovative things.”
The U.S. is behind China, but only in “cellular density,” Wright added, noting that one of the Chinese carriers operates a network with more than 11 times as many cellsites as the three major U.S. carriers combined. That’s an area where CBRS can help in the U.S. because it’s a low-power technology and “inherently more dense,” he said.