US cellular is tapping CBRS General Authorized Access (GAA) spectrum and using Tarana’s technology to add more capacity for fixed wireless in a Missouri town.
Even though UScellular plans to sell off big chunks of its spectrum and subscribers to T-Mobile, that's not stopping the regional wireless carrier from pursuing its fixed wireless access (FWA) ambitions — even if that means going head to head with T-Mobile in some regions.
In fact, UScellular is working with Tarana Wireless to increase its FWA capacity in West Plains, Missouri, a town where the demand for FWA is high. So high that the carrier has been getting such good uptake of its fixed wireless that it was about to run out of capacity on its mobile network.
As a solution, the operator decided to tap CBRS General Authorized Access (GAA) spectrum and use Tarana’s technology to add more capacity. UScellular equipped three of its existing towers in the area with Tarana gear.
Back to selling FWA
Where before, UScellular had to stop selling its fixed wireless broadband
product in West Plains, its salespeople have now resumed selling the product to more customers.
Mike Irizarry, executive vice president and CTO at UScellular, explained the evolution of the company’s FWA business. He said that UScellular — similar to T-Mobile and Verizon — has been taking advantage of the unused capacity on its 3GPP mobile network.
“When we launched a few years back, it was on our low-band spectrum,” said Irizarry. “Right now, it’s being deployed on our low-band and mid-band licensed spectrum.”
But CBRS GAA spectrum is available to anyone in areas where it’s not in use by the U.S. government (primarily the Navy). So, UScellular decided to tap CBRS spectrum and work with Tarana to deploy the vendor’s FWA equipment on UScellular towers. Tarana’s technology can use either licensed or unlicensed spectrum.
Tarana has more than 200 service provider customers. Tarana CEO Basil Alwan said that at first about 70% of its customers used unlicensed spectrum, while 30% used licensed. But now, it’s about 50/50.
Capacity has been an issue for Verizon and T-Mobile as well. T-Mobile has been especially vocal about not overburdening its mobile network with fixed wireless customers. Irizarry said, “Fixed wireless is going pretty fast. At some point you either have to add capacity or shut off the sales. Once you use up the capacity, using traditional technologies is not economic. We’re excited about the Tarana product, it gives carriers the ability to continue to sell beyond the point when you exhaust traditional capacity.”
It’s not that Tarana is boosting capacity on the 3GPP network. It simply uses the same towers to put up its systems and tap the free CBRS spectrum. Alwan said Tarana’s technology is “really built for fixed wireless.” The company has especially made a name for itself with its proprietary interference cancellation.
ldquo;The 3GPP is a great network,” said Irizarry. “But it’s trying to service very different use cases — mobility, fixed wireless and in some cases IoT. Any time you try to meet those requirements, you end up sub-optimizing maximum performance for the use cases.” He said Tarana’s technology is optimized for fixed wireless.
Irizarry said the “initial performance is fantastic.” It’s delivered internet speeds as high as 500 Mbps down and 104 Mbps up.
“Our hope would be we would use it anywhere we run out of capacity,” said Irizarry.
Although Tarana’s technology can work on any spectrum, whether 3GPP or not, its customer premise equipment is proprietary.
Why do this when you're selling the business to T-Mobile?
Irizarry refused to comment on
UScellular’s plans in light of the sale of assets to T-Mobile. He would say only, “T-Mobile
is buying our assets which include about 30% of our spectrum. The remaining spectrum we will look to
monetize. We have not decided what that monetization looks like. We have a business to run. We’re
competitors with T-Mobile.”
To dig a bit deeper, Fierce reached out to Recon Analytics analyst Roger Entner, asking why UScellular might be working with Tarana on FWA, given the fact that it wants to sell most of its assets to T-Mobile.
Entner noted that all of UScellular’s customers and most employees will go to T-Mobile, if the deal is approved by the Department of Justice and the FCC. The only thing remaining will be some spectrum and 4,388 towers. He said they’ll essentially be just a tower company.
Entner said that in the interim, “They are still a going concern. Legally speaking, they have to continue operating as if the sale might not happen. If they have contracts that they signed before the T-Mobile deal, they have to continue this. Otherwise, they’re in legal trouble. If UScellular would not compete against T-Mobile that would be a ground to not approve this sale. Only once this sells, then T-Mobile takes over and makes decisions.”
In terms of working with Tarana, if its FWA technology proves to be an effective and economical way to add more capacity, then T-Mobile may be interested in working with Tarana more expansively. “Tarana will work really hard so this performs really well, and then T-Mobile can look at it,” said Entner.