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“NSPs are in a position to use the CBRS band to — in effect — deploy their own LTE network without making significant investments for licensed spectrum acquisition.” Said Rajat Ghai, Technicolor, known as Vantiva
Network Service Providers (NSPs) have an opportunity to harness spectrum set aside for Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) to pursue a wide range of profitable use cases — especially those that surround Local Indoor Mobile Access (LIMA).
Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), is a 150 MHz-wide shared spectrum in 3.55 GHz to 3.7 GHz band. The FCC spectrum sharing policy creates an innovative opportunity for a lightly licensed tiered access service category that creates dynamic sharing of spectrum in real time. As a one-of-its-kind spectrum sharing concept, CBRS combines the best of traditional licensed spectrum (LTE) and unlicensed spectrum (Wi-Fi) by combining the best of both technologies, explains Ghai.
As a result, NSPs are in a position to use the CBRS band to — in effect — deploy their own LTE network without making significant investments for licensed spectrum acquisition. This, opens the door for NSPs to strategically utilize CBRS for a diverse set of use cases, that include:
- Local Indoor LTE mobile access (LIMA) to augment Wi-Fi coverage so that NSPs can control the quality of user experience and offload Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) costs.
- Leverage the Hybrid Fiber-Coaxial (HFC) plant and deep fiber nodes to deploy CBRS small cells for outdoor mobile access and for mobile backhaul.
- CBRS based Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) technology to provide broadband access in areas that don’t have cable access.
- Help enterprises — or venue owners — deploy CBRS based private LTE networks to augment in-building wireless coverage and capacity.
- Create new business models like Neutral Host Networks and Industrial IOT using this band.
NSPs are positioned very favorably to leverage the economics of the FCC’s CBRS spectrum to deploy mobile infrastructure in an extremely cost-effective manner.
These are among the conclusions of Rajat Ghai, VP, Wireless and Open Networking at Technicolor’s Connected Home Division in a white paper entitled CBRS 3.5 GHZ Use Cases With Focus On Localized Indoor Mobile Access (LIMA), Mobility and Service Continuity which is being presented at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2018, in Atlanta, Ga., October 22-25.
