Ruckus Wireless and Federated Wireless round out Citizens Radio Broadband Service Alliance
A group of heavy-hitters in the wireless, compute and network infrastructure businesses have joined forces to speed development and adoption of solutions tailored for use in the 3.5 GHz spectrum band.
Last year the U.S. Federal Communications Commission opened up 150 megahertz of spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band. Dubbed the Citizens Radio Broadband Service, the new commercially accessible band was previously dedicated to the U.S. Department of Defense.
The CBRS Alliance was formed to perpetuate shared spectrum solutions geared toward use in the 3.5 GHz band. According to Federated Wireless: “Operators will benefit from a greatly expanded footprint and capacity of the new spectrum, while subscribers will enjoy a consistent wireless broadband experience, particularly in challenging, high user density indoor locations such as universities, schools, airports, stadiums and corporate campuses.”
In addition to standards-setting, member companies are working on LTE-based field trials as well, bringing technologies to the FCC for final certification and interoperability verification.
To give an idea of how 3.5 GHz can be used, last year China Mobile and Nokia achieved a 220 megabits per second peak transmission rate using interband TD-LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation in a live demo.
FCC Wireless Telecommunications Bureau Chief Jon Wilkins said in May it was “time to focus on putting this spectrum to use for the American people, moving from concept development to implementation.”
He said new frequency coordination and spectrum management techniques build “on existing frequency coordination approaches by leveraging advanced computing to maximize the number of users that might be able to operate within a given area at a given time, making spectrum available where and when it’s needed, and enforcing protections and rights among use tiers.”
