Rebrand in to support global shared spectrum initiative
The CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service) Alliance announced this week that it will change its name to the OnGo Alliance. The organization, which has focused on driving the development, commercialization and adoption of OnGo™ shared spectrum solutions, said it plans to expand its mission to encompass 3GPP technologies operating in shared spectrum bands around the world. This expansion will help leverage its members’ current success in commercializing the CBRS band in the U.S. Due to this broader objective, the CBRS Alliance opted to change its name.
“The Alliance is very proud of our members’ amazing work over the last five years to realize the vision for LTE and 5G commercial services in the CBRS band,” OnGo Alliance President Dave Wright said in a statement. “While our focus will continue to be on advancing OnGo adoption and deployments in the 3.5 GHz CBRS band, our new, expanded mission provides the latitude for us to apply our specifications, work products, and learnings in other frequencies and countries.”
For the past five years, the CBRS Alliance and its approximately 200 members have come together to develop reliable, secure and cost-effective wireless services for the 3.5 GHz CBRS band. Since full commercial service was authorized early last year, the industry has seen OnGo solutions being adopted extensively. Meanwhile, OnGo networks have been deployed in a number of use cases including mobile broadband, fixed wireless access and enterprise private networks. Education, healthcare, manufacturing and transportation are just a few of the sectors that have leveraged these private deployments.
The Alliance has developed expertise in building an ecosystem, identifying and resolving policy and technical issues, stimulating wireless markets, and building industry consensus through its efforts to bring OnGo solutions to market. The Alliance’s work has extended beyond the CBRS band, and even the United States’ borders.
“Following the success of OnGo commercialization, the FCC, NTIA, and DoD are actively considering other bands for sharing,” OnGo Alliance Executive Director Alan Ewing said. “Additionally, the Alliance is being contacted by international organizations that would like to engage and become affiliated. Success in the CBRS band has shown the viability of spectrum sharing in other bands and geographies. The responsible next step would be to recast the Alliance as an organization dedicated to enabling 3GPP based technologies in shared spectrum.”
Benefits of the Alliance’s rebranding
The Alliance’s CBRS band knowledge and experience will be relied on in order to successfully enable 3GPP technologies in other shared spectrum bands. Broadening the organization’s scope, will yield a number of benefits, including:
• The work that has been undertaken by the CBRS Alliance on technical specifications would form the basis of a new set of specifications that would encompass other bands.
• The specifications should enable a consistent coexistence framework across networks in a range of frequency bands.
• Deployment and Operational best practices, which are now being implemented in production, would be replicable in other bands.
“It is critical to note that the OnGo Alliance’s work in the CBRS band will continue uninterrupted,” the Alliance said in a release. “The OnGo Alliance will now be a potential resource to anyone looking to enable 3GPP-based services in shared spectrum bands, wherever they may be located.”
Joe Dyton can be reached at joed@fifthgenmedia.com.
