ATLANTA — With the Federal Communications Commission voting Tuesday to enable sale of county-sized slices of the 150-MHz slice of high-bandwidth spectrum known as the Citizens Broadband Radio Service band (CBRS), Arris chief technology officer of customer premises equipment Charles Cheevers made a pitch to Cable-Tec Expo attendees during his afternoon session.
Operators serving enterprise customers such as shipyards, airports and sports venues can offer their low-cost, private LTE networks that are more reliable than WiFi. “We and other companies can deliver that to you today,” Cheevers said.
Speaking alongside Cheevers at the Arris-sponsored event was his counterpart at sibling wireless division Ruckus Networks, chief technology officer Mehmet Yavuz. Playing the part of moderator was Duncan Potter, senior VP of marketing for Arris.
As Cheevers noted, CBRS is a piece of underused spectrum, existing between 3.5 GHz and 3.7 GHz, that was only being exploited by a handful of aircraft carriers and U.S. naval stations.
Cheevers said the FCC made a “common sense” decision when it decided to allocate the spectrum to telecom companies, who can purchase local PAL licenses.
Arris also pitched uses such as neutral host applications (MDUs); MSO applications (wireless MVNO offload and smart homes); and MNO apps (network densification and capacity expansion).
Notably, Sioux Falls, S.D. operator Midco is currently testing CBRS for reaching rural broadband customers.
“Globally, everyone is looking at the FCC and how this market works out,” Yavuz added.
