How CBRS is Creating New Opportunities for Wireless Service Providers Webinar

Technology CBRS
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Cambium Networks' Director of Product Management for PMP solutions, Matt Mangriotis, discusses what CBRS means for Wireless Service Providers in this webinar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCibNkmkAmQ

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Thanks for joining this webinar today... if you have any further questions on this topic, please feel free to post questions here.

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I've read that the SAS will only be assigning 10 MHz unpaired channels. Will the PMP 450 line be able to utilize dynamically assigned unpaired channel blocks to form a 20 MHz channel? Also, will channel bonding only be available for PAL license holders or will GAA users be able to operate on a 20 MHz unpaired channel. 

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The SAS will assign the channel size you request, if it feels like it... While the minimum allocation is 10 MHz, you can ask for a 20 MHz channel. You can even ask for 40 MHz and if there is enough GAA available, you should get it, though the SAS is not required to honor all GAA requests above 10 MHz, depending on how many others are using GAA nearby. Different SAS vendors will have different policies on GAA. Suffice to say that this has been controversial. A lot of WISPs are counting on 20 MHz channels.

The type approval certificate for Cambium 450 base stations shows more power on 20 MHz than 10 MHz channels, as the legal power limit is per 10 MHz, not total. The 450 and 450i are approved for 40 MHz too, but with lower power; Medusa is approved for higher power in 40 than 20. I haven't seen any WISP-oriented base stations approved for more power on 40 MHz than Medusa. It's hard.

In LTE gear having two non-adjacent channels is called channel aggregation (CA) and is becoming commonplace. It would be interesting to see that in the 450 line but I haven't heard anything about it and don't know if the hardware can support it.

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@Alex1995 wrote:

 Also, will channel bonding only be available for PAL license holders or will GAA users be able to operate on a 20 MHz unpaired channel. 

Both PAL and GAA users can request more then 1 10MHz channel (e.g 10+10), but neither one are guaranteed it. A PAL licenses gives you priority over GAA, but doesn't not guarantee adjacent blocks, nor exclusive use of a specific channel.

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But bear in mind that if you are able to purchase two or more PALs, the SAS is obligated to give you contiguous channels if at all possible. There may be temporary exceptions during a Dynamic Protection Area (radar) activation, but the steady-state channels are contiguous, and they're the same channels are assigned (as much as possible) across all of your contiguous PAL areas. Just how the SAS operators (we call them the "Secret SAS Council") will collectively do this is still being worked out, but it is an FCC rule.

GAA policy is up to the SAS you're using. If Google turns out not to be ideal for you, then you might not want your proxy (cnMaestro) to stay exclusively locked to them.

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We agree with you Fred. This is one of the reasons that we allow customers to choose their desired SAS. At the start, we are working with Google and Federated Wireless, but will bring CommScope onboard in Q1 as well.