Federated Wireless has asked the FCC for permission to move forward with commercial CBRS deployments as soon as October, the company announced.
In its proposal for Initial Commercial Deployment, the Arlington, Va.-based company said it has 14 initial customers—wireless operators, cable companies, tower hoisters, managed service providers (MSPs) and CBRS devices vendors, including American Tower, Arris, Charter Communications and ExteNet Systems.
Other launch stats include the inclusion of 15 OEM partners, as well as 15,753 site locations across 47 states and Washington, D.C.
Notably, the plans for commercialization outlined in the Federated proposal suggest not waiting for the debate around Priority Access Licenses (PALs) to be finalized.
Separately, Federated Wireless announced a new CPI training program.
The CPI Training Program addresses the FCC’s initial commercial deployment rules, which mandate that all outdoor CBRS devices be installed by a certified professional installer to ensure that accurate location and serial number information is logged and reported to the SAS for proper operation.
Related: CBRS Alliance Declares Interop a Success, Says Commercial Deployments are ‘Imminent’
“Shared spectrum commercialization has begun, and at a far greater scale and scope than we all anticipated at this stage,” declared Iyad Tarazi, president and CEO of Federated Wireless, in a statement. “Businesses can now access shared spectrum to not only introduce new services and create new businesses models, but solve decades old challenges, such as improving wireless connectivity indoors and outdoors, and closing the digital divide.”
Cable and wireless operators are exploring opportunities for the Citizens Broadband Radio Service Device band, a 150 MHz-wide portion of largely underused spectrum existing between 3.55 GHz and 3.7 GHz. CBRS will ultimately be used for private LTE networks such as airports and industrial campuses.
Federated Wireless has suggested use cases spanning energy, entertainment, hotels, shopping malls, sports venues, offices, restaurants, seaports, smart cities and rural areas with more than 80 WISPs.
> Comcast, Charter Communications and Altice USA are each currently testing various CBRS applications.
By the end of the year, the CBRS Alliance said it expects to have nearly a dozen labs set up around the world to conduct testing for its OnGo certification of the technology.
The FCC, meanwhile, is still reviewing the rules for CBRS deployment, but the CBRS Alliance expects that the General Authorized Access portion of the band will begin being used for commercial applications by the end of 2018.
