Recent CBRS Updates Could Mean 'Dramatic Improvement' for Users

The citizens broadband radio service band has shown that spectrum can be shared without interfering with government users, in particular the naval radars that use the band, Richard Bernhardt, Wireless ISP Association vice president-spectrum and industry, said Thursday. Recent changes approved by the FCC, working with DOD and NTIA (see 2406120027), will make the band much more usable, he said during a WISPA webinar on “CBRS 2.0.” The rule changes take effect Friday.

The initial rules were made to “overprotect” incumbents and make sure “there wouldn’t be any interference,” Bernhardt said. The dynamic protection areas (DPAs) essentially “circle the U.S.” on the East and West coasts, covering a large percentage of the population, he said.

“The predictability and stability of the band will improve dramatically,” Bernhardt said. Most indoor and outdoor devices “will be able to stay where they are, use a location even if before they might have been in a DPA zone.” The FCC and the NTIA indicated that 72 million people in the U.S. “will now have access to CBRS with little or no interruption -- that’s a huge amount of change.” However, the changes “will not diminish the protection of the incumbents and I have to make that very clear.”

The changes will mean more CBRS use for 5G private networks, Bernhardt predicted. Outside DPA areas, which are now smaller, the revised rules no longer require that devices check in with a spectrum access system administrator within 4 minutes, 59 seconds, or be taken off the air, he said. Most SAS’s will now require a check in within six hours. The areas DPAs cover have also been “very substantially reduced."

Uncertainty about CBRS has kept the band “from reaching its full potential,” Andy Clegg, Google spectrum engineering lead, said. Users wanted more stability and fewer interruptions, he said. “We looked at the impediments to CBRS” and “knocked many of them down one by one.”

“We are looking at a dramatic improvement … in CBRS fundamentally due to the adoption of propagation models that are a lot more realistic and less conservative,” Clegg said. Some devices will no longer see interruptions, while devices in the DPAs will experience fewer interruptions.

Bernhardt said NTIA was open to negotiating changes in CBRS rules in part because the administration is looking at use of the model in other spectrum bands.

Speakers noted that FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel last month circulated an NPRM proposing further CBRS changes (see 2406130055). Clegg said “the rumor mill” has the NPRM broaching the topic of allowing higher-power CBRS devices. He said that proposal would require close studying.

Meanwhile, Tom Hazlett, former FCC chief economist now at Clemson University, on Wednesday urged a reevaluation of how spectrum assignment decisions are made.

Federal agencies should be required to justify the spectrum they are licensed to use, Hazlett said during a Georgetown University Center for Business and Public Policy webcast. “The bottom line," he said, "is that if you have people fighting over a resource, and they don’t have to bid for the resource in any material or important way,” it continues a legacy system “where there’s an arbitrary assignment of who gets what, how it’s used, what the rules are, and very little incentive to get past that.”

Regulators recognize the problem of agencies holding spectrum they may be under-using, but they also know “it’s not so easy” to address, Hazlett said. There needs to be a way of determining “the revealed demand, the discovery of how much something is worth.”

DOD and other agencies will “reflexively” oppose increased accountability for their spectrum holdings “and they should” to protect “the mission that they’re charged with carrying out,” Hazlett said. The dynamic is “straightforward,” and agencies will resist giving up spectrum rights without guarantees that they can “keep performing their functions." But Hazlett said he also doesn’t blame carriers for wanting additional licensed spectrum.

One potential answer is developing a better system that gives agencies incentives for more efficient use of spectrum, with better equipment, Hazlett said. “We need to really focus in on the places that that has been tried, where it has worked pretty well and how we can improve it.

There’s a “stalemate” in discussions with DOD and other agencies on opening additional bands for commercial use, Hazlett said. It’s difficult for agency decision makers to “make a deal,” he said. “They’re not allowed to just go out and sign a contract.” And even when agreements are reached, they can be overturned by Congress or in a new administration, he added.

Hazlett said the U.S. record is mixed on keeping up with China on wireless. “In some respects we are doing very well -- the U.S. has been an innovator overall, and we shouldn’t minimize that.” But there are “clear examples,” like making more mid-band spectrum available for 5G, where the U.S. has been slow to adjust. T-Mobile’s buy of Sprint helped by putting Sprint’s extensive but underused spectrum holdings in play, he said. That “pushed the other carriers to up their game.”