WISPs, Other Providers Starting to Deploy in CBRS

Wireless ISPs are expected to drive deployment of priority access licenses in the citizens broadband radio service band, likely being the first to deploy after the FCC finishes assigning licenses from the PAL auction that ended Aug. 25. Some larger auction bidders are starting to lay out plans. Experts and others said in interviews that auction winners will likely start to use their licenses in Q1, after the FCC finalizes channel assignments and conveys the licenses.

Commissioner Mike O’Rielly is “exceptionally pleased" with how the 3.5 GHz band is being used. “While I haven’t been able to visit deployment sites firsthand due to COVID, reports and articles that I have seen provide examples of varied uses and benefits, both operational and in the works,” he emailed: “Fixed wireless offerings from WISPs and private 5G networks used in commercial settings are leading the way, but other offerings will be in the marketplace soon. The future of” citizens broadband radio service (CBRS) “is incredibly bright.”

“WISPs are clearly the fast track in this band because they’re not dependent on handset penetration … and they have the advantage that they own both ends of the link,” said Preston Marshall, Google engineering director. Most are using the general authorized access (GAA) tier and didn’t buy PALs anyway, he said.

“The auction shows that the CBRS concept was successful,” Marshall said: “Instead of seeing a monolithic outcome … we saw that we could put spectrum into the hands of communities that have never had that kind of spectrum access before. We saw a lot of participation in rural areas by fixed wireless,” which “has always operated without protection in some kind of shared band.”

For WISPs, “this is the first time they’ve really had their chance to come to auctions and walk out with really valuable spectrum access rights,” Marshall said. “The auction was fairly successful in sort of democratizing spectrum access in the way we weren’t able to do in prior auctions.” Many auction winners are using the band in the GAA tier as PAL rules are finalized, he said.

Deployments

Licensees will deploy “very soon,” Rod Nelson, CEO of Geoverse. “We are deploying hundreds of sites this year utilizing PALs.”

Nextlink “is sincerely working day to day" to "serve rural Americans," said Ted Osborn, senior vice president-strategy and regulatory affairs at the growing Texas-based WISP. "This tool that has been provided by the commission is being put to work now and will be fully put to work" soon, he said.

Nearly 70 WISP Association members placed winning bids for more than 3,600 licenses in more than 1,350 counties in the auction, a WISPA spokesperson said: The $100.4 million they bid was "an unprecedented amount when considering the fixed wireless industry’s historical reliance on Part 15 unlicensed spectrum to serve its customers.”

Executives at Verizon, the top bidder in the auction, said the company's CBRS licenses will be used to supplement the other spectrum in its network and eventually for 5G. Verizon has the least midband spectrum among three national wireless carriers (see 2008260055).

“Our CBRS assets that we acquired recently have also been rapidly deployed, and that's also allowed us to have more capacity in the 4G LTE layer,” said Ronan Dunne, CEO of Verizon's Consumer Group, last week at an investor conference. “In due course, those CBRS assets will be available to us in 5G.”

“We entered in the CBRS auction, as you know, and we gained some 34 MHz covering 140 million of the population,” Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said during the most recent earnings call: “All in all, that is going to help us to augment the capacity in the network, especially on 4G.”

Not Waiting

Some operators, including Verizon, started deploying on CBRS before the auction since they could use GAA, said Monica Paolini, president of Senza Fili.

Dish Network “is going to be a different story,” the analyst said: “I am sure CBRS is not going to be the first band they will deploy. In general, CBRS deployments have started, but with COVID, things are progressing a bit more slowly.” Be realistic about the pace, with a gradual deployment likely, she said: “This is an ambitious new way to use spectrum, so all users are understandably being careful not to rush things, and that's good for CBRS in the long term.”

Dish declined comment now. When asked about radio units for its 5G network in its Q3 call earlier this month, Chief Commercial Officer Stephen Bye said they will be compatible with all the terrestrial bands to which Dish has access, including CBRS.

Eleven utilities bid in the auction, with 10 winning 371 licenses for more than $174 million. The largest bids came from Southern California Edison, which paid $118 million for 20 licenses, and San Diego’s Sempra, which paid $21 million for three licenses. The companies didn't comment.

“The low participation wasn’t for a lack of spectrum need or desire to deploy new broadband wireless technologies,” said Burns & McDonnell: “A dozen utilities that did not participate in the auction are still pursuing [private long-term evolution] but want to use a different spectrum strategy."

Cable Operators

Mediacom plans to use the spectrum, plus a mix of existing and new towers, to offer 100/20 Mbps fixed wireless broadband service across much of the footprint where it now has 3.5 GHz spectrum, said Senior Vice President-Government and Public Relations Tom Larsen. "It will get us in front of hundreds of thousands more homes." In those rural areas, residents generally have at most 100 Mbps upload, and sometimes less than 25 Mbps, so this wireless broadband "will be a compelling upgrade," he said.

Rural parts of Iowa, Georgia and North Carolina were identified as test markets for the Mediacom service, and the company plans to start testing in the first half of 2021 and offer service commercially either later that year or in early 2022, Larsen said. He said Mediacom sees possible precision agriculture applications.

Shentel launched its Beam fixed wireless broadband service this fall using 2.5 GHz spectrum and might end up using its CBRS spectrum for similar fixed wireless applications, said Vice President-Wireless Network Development Dan Meenan. The company's 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz licenses both cover parts of its existing mid-Atlantic and Midwest footprint, though they largely don't overlap, he said.

Mediacom "feel[s] like we have enough bandwidth" for 100/20 Mbps service and won't take part in the C-band auction, Larsen said. Shentel's Meenan said the company hasn't decided whether it will participate in the C-band auction, but "we look at all options."

The CBRS auction showed the wide interest in the band, said Colleen King, Charter Communications' vice president-regulatory affairs, at a recent FCBA event. Charter bought 210 licenses in 106 counties, she said. “We think this is a good opportunity to make a very efficient use of spectrum,” she said. “The big use for unlicensed spectrum is clearly in our extensive Wi-Fi network.”