- Federated Wireless says it achieved a major milestone in CBRS network reliability
- The achievement comes as CBRS remains a sore spot for operators like AT&T and organizations like CTIA
- Federated Wireless CEO Iyad Tarazi told Fierce that the CBRS shared spectrum model is working well, and he welcomes higher power levels to make it even better
To hear Federated Wireless CEO Iyad Tarazi tell it, the Citizens Broadband Radio Services (CBRS) market is going gangbusters.
Why is he saying that? Well, the CBRS industry has taken a bit of a beating the past few years, namely from the U.S. wireless industry’s biggest lobbying group CTIA. The organization doesn’t want CBRS’s shared spectrum model replicated elsewhere, and it launched a fairly massive smear campaign that dubbed CBRS a “failure.”
Then, to make matters worse, AT&T – with a straight face – last fall proposed that the entire CBRS band be moved down river, to the lower 3 GHz band, a move that would, if not kill, seriously injure the CBRS movement. The Department of Defense (DoD) recently appeared to pile onto AT&T’s idea when it suggested that CBRS licensees be moved to the 3.1-3.4 GHz band.
So, while privately held Federated Wireless typically provides business updates around this time of year, it’s particularly germane this year. “Given all the discussions that are going on, we want to give an update where we are with CBRS in general,” Tarazi said.
Here’s a snapshot of how it’s going: 450,000 CBRS radios deployed and more than 350,000 fixed wireless consumers are using CBRS. Some 90% of all smartphones shipped in the U.S. today have CBRS in them, and “it’s the No. 1 system today for private wireless in the U.S., allowing us to catch up with China,” he said.
It’s fair to say that Federated Wireless knows CBRS. It’s a Spectrum Access System (SAS) administrator and holds the largest share of that market, with Google coming in second, according to Tarazi. More specifically, Federated, which employs about 50 people, expects to hold about 70% SAS market share by June, he said.
Not all sunshine and lollipops
But CBRS is still a relatively young market, and it’s not perfect. During a discussion at the Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA) Connect (X) conference on Wednesday, Todd Kelly, CTO of engineering firm Step CG, said using unlicensed General Authorized Access (GAA) CBRS spectrum outdoors is a challenge in some geographies where there are a lot of CBRS devices deployed.
“There are some limitations in how we apply CBRS,” he said.
“We are also seeing different applications of CBRS and some interference created by the macros interfering with the enterprise networks, just because of the way they’re architected in specific areas,” said Stephen Leotis, president and co-founder of Moso Networks, a private networks provider. “If you plan something for a certain power level but you are not in control, that is risk.”
Fierce asked Federated about their complaints. “We’ve reviewed our system and found no records of these deployments or any associated challenges. That said, we’ll reach out directly to learn more. We remain committed to supporting our entire customer base,” the company stated.
Federated claims 100% uptime
In fact, as a SAS administrator, Federated is claiming great success in performance and reliability. The company announced on Thursday that it achieved 100% CBRS uptime and zero interference in 2024 and through March 2025. In other words, not once has it allowed commercial users to interfere with incumbent military users in the 3.5 GHz band, which is kind of the whole goal of the shared spectrum framework.
“Over the last 18 months, we have not had any interference reports from the commercial sector at all,” Tarazi told Fierce. “We've been able to get interference completely under control. For a system that has 450,000 devices, that's actually quite impressive.”
That said, it’s making efforts to improve CBRS operations with the help of AI. Historically, Federated Wireless would run propagation models and do capacity analysis for customers to answer questions like: What can CBRS do for me? How can I use CBRS to offer services to my customers?
They’ve since evolved their architecture to answer more complex questions that customers are asking about propagation and interference. Using a model pioneered by Nvidia, Federated will be able to develop network buildout plans about 100 times faster than before and provide more accurate recommendations about where equipment should be deployed. That will be commercially offered in the second half of this year.
“The advantage for our customers is that we use all the data from this SAS – how many channels are being used, where they're being used, what interference we're seeing. We're able to give them the full network picture,” he said.
Beyond that, Federated also deploys private wireless networks using CBRS, a market where it’s starting to see some traction. A couple years ago, Federated had to lay off staff because the private wireless market didn’t emerge as fast as anticipated, but it’s still engaged and has private network contracts with the federal government and other entities, including HPE and Notre Dame Stadium.
Between the SAS and the private networks business, Federated Wireless’ main customers are mobile operators and fixed wireless operators, as well as system integrators that are working on private wireless deployments.
Relief over lower 3 GHz
While Federated is focused on enhancing CBRS technical capabilities, it’s also navigating critical policy shifts in how spectrum is allocated.
The prime target that the wireless carriers want to get their hands on is spectrum in the lower 3 GHz, which is occupied by the DoD and it’s not keen on moving or really even sharing. It’s been the source of a power struggle for years, with the DoD mostly winning because it holds, for obvious reasons, a lot of clout in Washington, D.C.
So it was a relief for the CBRS industry when the House Energy and Commerce Committee this week advanced its part of the budget reconciliation package that removed frequencies between 3.1 GHz and 3.45 GHz from auction-eligible spectrum.
“This looks to us like it is a more rational process of finding spectrum to auction. But as everything else in this world, things change on a daily basis, so it's quite fluid for everyone and I think we all know that,” he said.
Until all is said and done, it’s hard to know for sure what will happen with the lower 3 GHz. But the CBRS community – including WISPA, private wireless vendors, enterprises and individual users – are making their voices heard. “I think there's been quite a bit of us who are explaining what we built and why it's valuable,” he said. “Hopefully that is being taken into consideration.”
More improvements welcome
The FCC is considering changes to the CBRS framework that could make it more attractive to mobile carriers.
Federated is advocating for higher power levels and other changes that will make CBRS more valuable. “We think there's more than enough room now to raise power and remove some constraints and still not impact existing users,” Tarazi said. “Our view is that we can protect everybody that's deployed already and then on top of that, we can allow for more high power for people that have the equipment and the need to do that.”
To be sure, Federated Wireless has invested a lot in making CBRS work reliably.
“That's the reason we are headed for 70% plus market share. We made the investment to make it really reliable,” he said. “We've reached a point now where the system is as stable as commercial spectrum that's exclusive. The only limitation right now are things like power limitations, which is why improvements in that are necessary and why we're investing now in AI and in GPUs and better algorithms.”
Martha DeGrasse, a freelance writer who moderated the Connect(X) panel referenced in this article, contributed to this report.