Coalition of organizations urges against higher-power CBRS rules

A coalition including Charter Communications, WISPA and public interest groups wrote a letter to the Federal Communications Commission urging the agency to reject proposals to increase power limits in the shared Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band, saying it would favor macro cell deployments only and jeopardize existing deployments. Other signatories voicing strong opposition to changes in the band include the Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge, the Consortium for School Networking, and the Schools, Health & Libraries (SHLB) Coalition. The 3.5 GHz CBRS band has a unique sharing paradigm that includes incumbent federal operations, priority access licenses (PALs), and general authorized access (GAA). The band was designed with lower power limits, as well as smaller county-sized licensing scheme for PALs. The coalition asserts that allowing higher powered operations would “fundamentally alter the nature of CBRS” and the objective to create a flexible band for a variety of use cases. It pointed to existing deployments using CBRS to provide rural broadband, IoT deployments in factories, and private networks delivering connectivity to schools and libraries. Fixed wireless networks in rural areas could be impacted, the groups said, as providers wouldn’t be able to take advantage of higher power levels in part because existing user equipment doesn’t support it.