NextWave today announced the launch of its wide-area 2.5 GHz (Band 41) network services in the New York metro area by its affiliates and NextWave NYC subsidiary. NextWave acquired its 2.5 GHz licenses before the FCC’s latest Auction 108.
NextWave describes itself as the largest holder of 2.5 GHz (Band 41) spectrum outside of T-Mobile and it controls enough spectrum depth in major markets like New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Las Vegas to support a service like this, according to John Dooley, a director at the company. Dooley is also affiliated with Jarvinian Ventures, the company that helped Globalstar develop Band 53 for non-terrestrial network services and ultimately win a deal with Apple.
NextWave said its New York metro service is the “first of its kind” wide-area cellular network that is completely devoted to private network applications. The company’s 2.5 GHz licenses provide it with more than 50 MHz of bandwidth in major markets.
The NextWave service in the New York metro area will be fully commissioned over the next month, the company said in a press release. The company also said that facility-based 5G small cell networks will be overlaid by a dual 4G and 5G high-power wide area network, allowing private network customers to maintain high levels of security and performance.
“While the private networking era is clearly here, industrial and enterprise users still must cope with both limited ecosystems and limited network coverage,” said Frank Cassou, president and CEO of NextWave, in a statement. “The launch of NextWave’s Band 41 (2.5 GHz) service in New York demonstrates the extraordinary value of using conventional wireless carrier spectrum for private network applications. Unlike other private networking options, the NextWave solution provides both wide-area coverage and the ability to utilize popular smartphones and other widely available mobile broadband devices.”
Cassou is one of the original members of the NextWave management team from the 1990s, when it gained notoriety for bidding in PCS auctions, then going bankrupt and ultimately prevailing at the U.S. Supreme Court. He helped guide the company through restructuring and is now back in an operational role with the launch of these metro networks.
The company is using Airspan for the high-power infrastructure and the fixed CPEs. For industrial user equipment (UE), there are a few vendors, according to Dooley. For enterprise UE, it’s pretty much BYOD due to the universality of Band 41, he told Fierce.
From a technical point of view, the target customer is any entity that needs private network functionality in their facility and over a wide area, Dooley said. This is because they have a mix of requirements – such as low latency, security and guaranteed minimum throughput – that can’t be serviced by the conventional carrier network, he explained. While there are a lot of potential customers with these kinds of requirements, their initial focus is tech. (More on that to come later in the year, Dooley promised.)
Using high-power service available in Band 41, they can allow industrial and enterprise users to remain on their private network even when they leave their facility. Because it’s the same spectrum used by T-Mobile, enterprise users can bring their own Band 41 devices.
NextWave’s Phase I is the launch across the New York metro area. Phase II is expected in early 2023 and will add services in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.