“DoD is concerned about the high possibility that non-Federal users will not adhere to the established coordination conditions at all times; the impacts related to airborne systems, due to their range and speed; and required upgrades to multiple classes of ships,” the 2023 report said. We contacted the Department of Defense and did not receive a response.
Levin quoted Calabrese as saying the new plan “would pull the rug out from under more than 1,000 CBRS operators that have deployed more than 400,000 base stations. While they could, in theory, share DoD spectrum lower in the band, that spectrum will now be so congested it’s unclear how or when that could be implemented.”
Small ISP slams “AT&T and its cabal of telecom giants”
AT&T argues that CBRS spectrum is underutilized and should be repurposed for commercial mobile use because it “resides between two crucial, high-power, licensed 5G bands”—specifically 3.45–3.55 GHz and 3.7–3.98 GHz. It said its proposal would expand the CBRS band’s total size from 150 MHz to 200 MHz by relocating it to 3.1–3.3 GHz.
Keefe John, CEO of a Wisconsin-based wireless home Internet provider called Ethoplex, argued that “AT&T and its cabal of telecom giants” are “scheming to rip this resource from the hands of small operators and hand it over to their 5G empire. This is nothing less than a brazen theft of America’s digital future, and we must fight back with unrelenting resolve.”
John is vice chairperson of the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA), which represents small ISPs and is a member of Spectrum for the Future. He wrote that CBRS is a “vital spectrum band that has become the lifeblood of rural connectivity” because small ISPs use it to deliver fixed wireless Internet service to underserved areas.
John called the AT&T proposal “a deliberate scheme to kneecap WISPs, whose equipment, painstakingly deployed, would be rendered obsolete in the lower band.” Instead of moving CBRS from one band to another, John said CBRS should stay on its current spectrum and expand into additional spectrum “to ensure small providers have a fighting chance.”