CBRS No Substitute for Licensed, Exclusive-Use Spectrum: CTIA

A new study by CTIA and Recon Analytics questions whether citizens broadband radio service spectrum, often cited as the potential sharing model of the future, is a suitable replacement for exclusive, licensed spectrum. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is moving on release of a national spectrum strategy (see 2209260048). Carriers already said they hope the strategy will lay out bands that can be cleared for licensed use. Wi-Fi advocates fired back.

“Data use is up, prices are down, and we are already seeing innovations from driverless cars to [augmented and virtual reality] education -- all thanks to exclusive-use, licensed spectrum,” said CTIA President Meredith Baker: “We need policymakers to focus on creating a pipeline of additional licensed spectrum to build on this foundation and secure America’s innovation leadership, and not export a still unproven experiment to additional bands.”

“A review of today’s CBRS marketplace shows that CBRS does not live up to the hype as the foundation of innovation and should not be a model for future spectrum policy,” said Roger Entner, lead analyst at Recon Analytics. “Real-world studies show low utilization, low market demand, and a dearth of innovative use cases,” he said.

The report said the “few real-world studies on CBRS usage” suggest the band is underutilized. “The most prevalent use cases are traditional wireless deployments, suggesting CBRS is not driving innovative new use cases,” the report said: “Spectrum sharing technology is complicated, discouraging adoption. Some vendors have abandoned the market altogether.”

Recon Analytics estimated only 240,000 CBRS access points are in use nationwide, with fewer than 1,000 businesses operating them, compared with 50 million Wi-Fi access points. A recent survey by Technalysis Research found only 2% of companies were planning to use CBRS spectrum, the report said. Among “two remaining” spectrum access system operators, “Federated Wireless states that it has more than 375 customers serving 110,000 access points” while “Google has not disclosed how many companies it provides SAS and related CBRS services for,” the report said.

“One fundamental problem with CBRS is that the sharing is unequal; federal governmental users can use the licenses whenever they want or need them,” while licensed and general access users “do not possess reliable, predictable access to use CBRS spectrum,” the report said: “This situation is akin to that of being a permanent subtenant. But commercial users, by necessity, expect that their network of choice be available at the performance characteristics they expect on a consistent basis.”

Firing Back

Wi-Fi advocates questioned the assumptions in the report. "Comparing spectrum efficiency of CBRS, which is intended for sharing among three tiers of users, with an exclusive-use licensed model, is truly an outstanding example of [comparing] apples-to-oranges,” said Alex Roytblat, Wi-Fi Alliance vice president-regulatory affairs.

“CTIA’s report demonstrates nothing except how threatened the big carriers are by competition and the direct access to spectrum for potential enterprise customers and small ISPs that CBRS and spectrum sharing makes possible,” said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America: “The reality is that large bands of prime spectrum the military and other federal users will not be able to clear for auction can be shared with the private sector, and especially for school, enterprise and other local private networks that increasingly enrich the nation’s wireless ecosystem.”

CBRS “has been widely deployed for private networks and other new use cases in a very short time,” but if the wireless industry hadn’t pushed the FCC to reverse its original decision “to auction much smaller license areas, we would see an even wider scope of users and use cases,” Calabrese said. In 2018, over a dissent by Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC voted to change the original CBRS rules to offer county-size licenses in a CBRS auction rather than census tracts (see 1810230037).

“What CTIA does not understand is that this is a piece of spectrum that is not intended for traditional mobile use or traditional unlicensed use,” emailed Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. “Certainly providers in areas neglected by CTIA members -- such as Tribal lands and rural communities -- have jumped at the opportunity to use the spectrum (as have competitors such as cable operators),” he said: “But the true innovation is taking place in deployment of private networks. Since these are private networks that compete directly with CTIA, it is no surprise they would like to snuff out this business before it catches on.”

“If we want to continue leading the world in wireless innovation, we can't keep doing the same thing over and over,” Feld said. He conceded there have been challenges the past two years “since the FCC … finally approved rules and started certifying devices and professional installers.” It took “20 years from when cellular technology was developed in the 1970s to significant deployment in the mid/late 1990s,” he said.

The report “uses cherry-picked data and overlooks robust success across many different industries,” WifiForward said in a statement: “The FCC first issued CBRS licenses just over 18 months ago, and was still granting CBRS licenses last month. CBRS usage and deployments are moving far faster than any of the traditional cellular providers’ deployments. As of May of this year, more than 228,000 CBRS devices had been deployed, connecting everything from the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia to the John Deere facility in Illinois.”