Commissioner O'Rielly Remarks Before the CBRS Alliance

While there was a great need for more spectrum for advanced wireless systems, finding unencumbered frequencies has always been a long-standing battle. Thankfully, then came along the innovation of the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) framework and requisite technology. [March's] announcement that you are working on 5G CBRS specifications, called CBRS Alliance Release 3, proved a lot of people wrong. It is expected that these specifications, which will include coexistence requirements to ensure interoperability between LTE and 5G networks in the 3.5 GHz and other bands, will be completed in the fourth quarter of 2019, enabling 5G in this band in 2020. This will likely be the first US mid-band 5G play. Left on the Federal Communications Commission’s plate to get CBRS fully operational is concluding the review and approval of the Spectrum Access Systems, or SAS, and Environmental Sensing Capability systems, commonly referred to as the ESC.