- AT&T presented a proposal that would require current CBRS users to be relocated, increasing available CBRS spectrum from 150 MHz to 200 MHz
- The move would give the FCC the opportunity, when it regains auction authority, to auction off the 3.55-3.7 GHz band for licensed, full-power use, according to AT&T
- Existing CBRS users hate the plan
AT&T published a blog today — the same week industry leaders are gathered for Mobile World Congress Las Vegas — where it outlined a way for the wireless industry to get more full-power licensed spectrum. But the proposal didn't go over well in some corners of the industry.
AT&T's plan calls for moving Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS) users to the 3.1-3.3 GHz band, down from the 3.5 GHz where CBRS currently resides, and then auctioning off 3.55-3.7 GHz for licensed, full-power use, uniting 5G services in the 3 GHz band.
The 3.45-3.55 GHz and 3.7-3.98 GHz bands would not change under AT&T’s plan and would continue to be licensed for mobile broadband services. Department of Defense (DoD) users currently in the lower 3 GHz presumably would stay where they are, protected much the same way the Navy is currently protected in the 3.5 GHz band.
“This approach would give the U.S. 530 MHz of contiguous licensed mid-band spectrum to support 5G, with potential future expansion at both ends of the band,” said Rhonda Johnson, AT&T EVP, Federal Regulatory Relations, in the blog.
AT&T’s disdain for the CBRS band is pretty well known, so the idea of moving it downriver isn’t completely out of the blue. Chris Sambar, AT&T’s outgoing EVP for Technology, last year said he’d like to rip out all of the CBRS radios in AT&T’s network primarily due to their power limitations. He made the point as part of a broader argument for more licensed mid-band spectrum for U.S. operators.
Industry leaders say it's important for the U.S. to get more mid-band spectrum for 5G. CTIA President and CEO Meredith Attwell Baker told MWC attendees in Las Vegas on Tuesday that China is on track to have up to four times more mid-band spectrum than the U.S. will have allocated by 2027.
She specifically called out lower 3 GHz and the 7/8 GHz as key bands that are still being studied by the U.S. government almost a full year after the National Spectrum Strategy was unveiled.
CTIA often has called the CBRS band a failure, in part because it doesn’t want to see the band duplicated elsewhere, where big operators want to use licensed, full-power spectrum. CTIA points out that the C-band, which was auctioned off in 2021, is deployed at a much higher rate than CBRS spectrum.
CTIA did not immediately have a comment on AT&T’s latest proposal when Fierce reached out Wednesday.
AT&T’s proposal stirred up a lot of fervor, but it’s not likely to go anywhere in the immediate future. It’s not yet been formally submitted to the FCC, and the FCC currently doesn’t have auction authority to do any new auctions. Plus, the National Telecommunications and Information Industry (NTIA) oversees government use of spectrum and it would need to be involved, as well as other stakeholders, including the DoD.
And the proposal is stirring up heated opposition. Hundreds of Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) members use the CBRS band to provide fixed wireless access (FWA) services across the country, and they have no desire to uproot their existing gear at 3.5 GHz to make way for the likes of AT&T in the lower portion of the 3 GHz band.
The CBRS band is set up with a three-tiered system designed to protect incumbent Navy users. AT&T didn’t participate in the CBRS auction of Priority Access Licenses (PALs), although Verizon and Dish Network did. Practically anyone can access the General Authorized Access (GAA) portion of the band, which doesn’t require purchasing a license.
Exclusive control?
Spectrum for the Future, whose members include Comcast and Charter Communications, accused AT&T of trying to undermine competition.
“AT&T doesn’t just want to kill competition in the CBRS band, they want exclusive control over spectrum currently shared among a diverse array of users,” said Tamara Smith, spokesperson for Spectrum for the Future, in a statement. “Four years ago, AT&T declined to participate in the CBRS auction alongside the other two major U.S. cellular carriers, and now the company is feeling left out of the private wireless boom and desperate to arrest the new competition driving down prices for U.S. consumers.”
The FCC is in the process of gathering comments on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), where it’s considering various ways to further improve the CBRS framework.
Making CBRS work better
However, “it’s not about should we shut it down. It’s about how do we make it work for even more entities and make it better,” said Richard Bernhardt, VP of Spectrum and Industry at WISPA.
“CBRS is not underutilized,” he told Fierce. “It’s actually heavily utilized and the numbers are going up because of all kinds of different things,” including the FCC’s move earlier this year to expand the CBRS service area to reach about 72 million more people.
“The fact of the matter is, you can't just pick up one band and dump it into another band and expect it to work,” Bernhardt said.
He added, “A tremendous amount of effort has gone into creating CBRS and tweaking the standards and making the rules work well.”
Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Project at New America’s Open Technology Institute, called AT&T’s proposal a “red herring” premised on wishing away the U.S. Navy’s need to continue using CBRS spectrum.
“CBRS is now widely used and is proving to be the innovation band the FCC intended it to be,” he told Fierce, noting that CBRS provides local spectrum access to enterprises, schools, rural wireless ISPs and other operators while protecting incumbent U.S Navy systems.
Iyad Tarazi, CEO of Federated Wireless, which operates a Spectrum Access System (SAS) that protects federal users in the CBRS band and enables sharing, is not OK with moving current CBRS users but can get behind the idea of extending the CBRS sharing model to other bands.
"We’ve recently exceeded 400,000 devices deployed in the CBRS band, demonstrating the system's robust performance and the strong demand for spectrum in this range,” Tarazi said in a statement provided to Fierce. “Harmonizing the 3 GHz band will further enhance efficiency and scale, while safeguarding and supporting existing users. Moreover, extending the CBRS sharing model into the lower 3 GHz band would create mutual benefits for both federal users and the commercial sector."