Carr Aide: FCC Wants Better Data on How CBRS Is Really Used
The relative success of the citizens broadband radio service remains a contentious issue, judging from discussions Tuesday during a Technology Policy Institute webinar. Arpan Sura, a top aide to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, indicated that the agency wants to get a more granular view of how well CBRS is working as it explores the future of the band.
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CBRS advocates have long been concerned that changes under Carr could fundamentally change the rules for the band (see 2503130049). Carr said at a WISPA meeting in 2022 that the FCC should at least start to ask about higher power levels (see 2210050052). AT&T has a proposal before the FCC to move CBRS from 3.55-3.7 GHz to 3.1-3.3 GH and reallocate the spectrum CBRS now occupies for licensed use (see 2410090037).
Sura asked Tuesday what benchmarks the FCC should use to assess whether the band “has been properly utilized.” If it can be shown that CBRS is used “almost exclusively for capacity offload in some form or fashion,” rather than for private networks, he said, maybe that would change the view on whether the band is being used to its “full potential.”
Everyone should be able to agree that CBRS “hasn’t really remained true to its original conception, for better or worse,” Sura said. The FCC, over several administrations, “has continued to iterate based on what we see working and where we think improvements need to be made.”
Mary Claire York, NCTA's associate general counsel, said CBRS has been a success, with more than 430,000 devices deployed in the band and robust use in both the general authorized access and licensed tiers. More than 80% of counties are seeing use of the band, she said, and the priority access license auction had a record 228 bidders, many of which were “entities that don’t normally participate” in FCC auctions.
CBRS can’t be evaluated like bands licensed for use by carriers, York argued. The success “is going to look different than a carrier deploying a macro tower,” she said. “It’s not just the capacity, it’s the coverage.” For example, it’s a tribal nation using CBRS because it couldn’t get service any other way, she said. “You can measure [CBRS] in terms of new licensees, the breadth and diversity,” and the success it has had sharing with naval radars without interference. Nationwide carriers are also using the band to grow capacity in dense urban areas, she added.
York noted that the size of deployments varies widely, from a school district with a few thousand students using CBRS for a private 5G network, to the Marine Corps using it for a 700,000-square-foot logistics base in Georgia. A lot of people continue to tell the FCC in comments on the band that “this is affordable, reliable, available spectrum that we can’t get another way.”
Tom Power, founder of Big Star, countered that CBRS usage so far has been “choppy.” A former CTIA general counsel, Power said that in some cities coverage levels appear low, and while it's known that a lot of counties are seeing use of CBRS, that “doesn’t really tell you … the extent of the coverage.” There are also signs that use is slowing, with fewer devices coming online, he said. “It would be good, when we have the data, to see where things are really going.”
NTIA at one point undertook a quantitative assessment of federal usage of spectrum, Power said. The agency looked at how much spectrum is being used, where and how often, he said, arguing that those are the kinds of measurements needed to understand whether CBRS is being used efficiently.
Power also noted that even though many smaller bidders participated in the 2020 priority access license auction, 16 of the 20 biggest were traditional providers. “You put spectrum out there, whether you put it out there perfectly or imperfectly, folks will find a way to use it.” Verizon was the top bidder in the $4.54 billion auction (see 2009020057).
CBRS is located between bands used by carriers, Power added. “Whatever the merits of CBRS, I’m not sure [that] it needed to be there, particularly if you’re going to lower the power levels, meaning less geographic coverage.” CBRS could instead have been located in higher-frequency spectrum that's not as usable for 5G, he said.
Power conceded that there’s not much momentum behind the AT&T proposal, and if the FCC reallocated the band, current users would have to be compensated or even grandfathered in under the current rules.
CTIA, meanwhile, reported on a meeting with Sura to urge reallocation of the CBRS band, noting that it sits between 3.45 GHz and the lower C band. The FCC has “a real opportunity to build a 700+ megahertz contiguous superhighway in the best part of mid-band,” the group said in a filing posted Tuesday in docket 17-258. “Transparency around CBRS usage would benefit dialogue on the future of the band.”
The general authorized access tier has been surprisingly active, responsible for 70% of active CBRS use, said Paroma Sanyal, a principal at the Brattle Group. CBRS is “finally moving” beyond the experimental stage. Exclusive-use and shared spectrum have to be viewed as complementary, she said. “They’re not substitutes -- you can’t trade off one for the other.”