- The OnGo Alliance, which represents CBRS users, is amping up efforts to defend its turf, saying more than $14 billion has been invested in the “innovation band”
- The effort arrives as mobile operators like AT&T are eager to see CBRS go away and its spectrum be reallocated for exclusive wireless use by wireless operators
- But OnGo Alliance members say the costs to relocate CBRS are not worth the effort – and they’re not going anywhere
Once again, there’s a lot of talk in the wireless industry about what constitutes the fourth biggest wireless competitor in the U.S. after Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T.
Is it EchoStar’s Boost Mobile wireless entity, which was propped up to be the fourth facilities-based wireless provider by the U.S. government vis-à-vis the T-Mobile/Sprint merger? Is it cable, in part because Charter Communications and Comcast, as MVNOs, combined serve more than 19 million mobile customers, which is more than double what Boost Mobile serves? Or is it something else entirely?
According to the OnGo Alliance, it’s that last bucket, which is served by Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), that constitutes the fourth entity powering more than 420,000 wireless radios from all walks of life. Think private networks at airports, factories, schools and hospitals across the country and wireless IPS serving rural areas.
“We are kind of the fourth largest,” said Kurt Jacobs, VP at the OnGo Alliance, formerly known as the CBRS Alliance. “If you were to take the number of subscribers and connections and things connected, CBRS would be the fourth largest carrier in the country.”
Why tout CBRS now?
One of the driving forces behind the OnGo Alliance’s full-court press marketing campaign right now is the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act that Congress passed and President Trump signed on July 4. The legislation set aside protections for the 3.1-3.45 GHz and the 7.4-8.4 GHz bands, meaning they are ineligible for auction. The same protections were not afforded to the CBRS or 6 GHz bands.
Because the OBBB calls for the government to identify at least 800 megahertz of spectrum to be auctioned between the 1.3 GHz to 10.5 GHz range, the fear is that spectrum-hungry regulators will look at the CBRS 3.5 GHz and the 6 GHz bands to fill their quota.
The CBRS band was already under siege when AT&T proposed the band be moved from its 3.5 GHz location to the lower 3 GHz, which now appears unrealistic due to its OBBB protection status. But that proposal fueled long-time CBRS opposition by CTIA, the wireless industry’s biggest U.S. lobbying association, and CBRS opponents are likely looking elsewhere for a suitable new home for CBRS.
In response to all of that, the OnGo Alliance is here to say: Don’t touch our CBRS spectrum.
Here are some of OnGo’s talking points:
- CBRS companies have invested more than $14 billion across the ecosystem, including $4.7 billion in spectrum, $3.4 billion in networks, $4.4 billion in devices and $1.5 billion in infrastructure.
- The cost to relocate CBRS would be in the neighborhood of $12 billion to $14 billion, including the replacement of 413,000 base stations and millions of devices. Navy radar replacement costs are unknown, but the Navy would also have to replace its systems.
- Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T each serve more than 100 million customers. CBRS networks serve 13.5 million to 14.5 million, making it the fourth largest wireless provider in the U.S., ahead of Boost Mobile’s 7 million subscribers.
- It’s been only four years since CBRS licenses were issued and the FCC has never repurposed successfully deployed spectrum this quickly.
Plus, there’s no alternative spectrum in which to relocate. As noted previously, the 3.1-3.45 GHz is off the table because it’s used by the Department of Defense (DoD) and lacks commercial authorization.
The lower 3 GHz isn’t a good place to relocate CBRS anyway because “it’s a very messy place to move into,” Jacobs said, in part due to the need for a completely different shared spectrum mechanism versus the Environmental Sensing Capability (ESC) that’s used along the coastlines for CBRS.
One of the reasons it’s been challenging for the OnGo Alliance to get its message across is its members and use cases are so diverse, according to Jacobs, whose day job is as VP of Federal Markets at JMA Wireless. The OnGo Alliance is an 89-member consortium dedicated to evangelizing CBRS and shared spectrum frameworks worldwide.
“One of our weaknesses is that we’re like an archipelago of success stories,” he said. “That’s the idea of shared spectrum. Because it’s not exclusive use, it has a lot of different constituencies that are able to take advantage of it. We’re trying to aggregate the messaging so people have the right perspective on how CBRS is being used and growing and evolving.”
Background on CBRS
Of course, the OnGo Alliance’s message is a far cry from the doom and gloom CBRS opponents are saying about CBRS, which was set up years ago to serve as the “innovation band” – namely, one that caters to myriad use cases that are not the traditional high-power, exclusively licensed spectrum bands dominated by the big wireless carriers.
The idea was to provide a spectrum band – shared with the U.S. Navy – that protects Navy users, primarily but not exclusively when their planes are taking off and landing on ships – while allowing commercial users to tap into the spectrum when the Navy doesn’t need it, including in vast parts of the middle U.S. where few Navy ships are stationed.
“We certainly think that CBRS is a success story because of the innovation so many people experience. It’s a very efficient use of spectrum and it’s allowing for uses of the spectrum by everybody,” Jacobs said. “It’s a win, win, win.”
But wireless carriers never did like the idea of giving up prime 5G mid-band spectrum – at around 3.5 GHz, smack in the middle of the precious 3 GHz band – for use by non-traditional users. The FCC, under then-Republican Chairman Ajit Pai, in 2019 proceeded anyway, declaring a bold new plan to designate the CBRS band for non-traditional uses that was supposed to be more 5G friendly than a previous Democrat-led proposal.
Initially, the CBRS framework was extremely conservative in their approach, fearing any interference with U.S. Navy ships would wreck the whole thing, Jacobs noted. But eventually, as everyone in the CBRS ecosystem worked out the kinks, it became evident they didn’t need to worry so much and some of the limitations were relaxed.
As it turns out, there’s never been an incident where a commercial user has interfered with the Navy radars, according to Federated Wireless CEO Iyad Tarazi. Federated is one of the two largest Spectrum Access System (SAS) administrators that coordinates users in the CBRS band, and it would know if any interference were happening.
“We’ve protected the Navy 100% since day one, and we'll continue to do that,” he told Fierce.