Thursday, March 28, 2024
spot_img
HomeDAS & In Building WirelessCBRSGeoverse Aims To Offer The Best And Easiest Private LTE Solutions For...

Geoverse Aims To Offer The Best And Easiest Private LTE Solutions For CRE Owners – Geoverse

The prospect of the Citizen Broad-band Radio Service’s (CBRS) availability is an attractive one for commercial real estate owners. After all, this 3.5GHz band of spectrum that will be available for public use will provide building owners with the opportunity to upgrade and transition their Wi-Fi network to a private wireless network based on the global LTE standard, but at a lower cost than if they were relying on a traditional wireless carrier for access.

CBRS will give CRE owners the ability to offer more reliable wireless connectivity, not just to meet their tenants’ growing demands for it, but also to outfit their building with more “smart” devices, whether it be security cameras, timed lights, automatic locking doors or thermostats—all of which will operate more efficiently over the high-performance CBRS service that the private LTE network will provide.

Yes, this prospect is attractive, but it also raises some basic questions, such as how will CBRS work? And, how will this solution get installed? Geoverse, an ATN International subsidiary that specializes in turnkey in-building private LTE networks, helps CRE owners answer these questions and more. In order to fulfill its mission to be the easiest private LTE solution for enterprise and building owners to use, Geoverse offers a simple business model where it owns all the complexity of the design, deployment and operations and offers the solution bundle as a simple monthly subscription model. Doing so removes the complexity of the cellular infrastructure involved with delivering private LTE—and it’s done in a way that’s as simple as deploying an enterprise’s Wi-Fi network.

“We really want to advocate on behalf of the enterprise to create a tailored solution for that owner,” Geoverse co-founder and CEO Rod Nelson said.

Geoverse has also made private LTE deployments easier with its GeoCore mobile packet core network, which comes available already pre-integrated with the national wireless operators. Once the building is plugged into GeoCore, it’s automatically connected to the broader cellular community. The company also consults with its enterprise customers and building owners on various devices and applications, as the CBRS ecosystem is new and rapidly evolving. Leading technology companies have already started to release a number of compatible devices like smartphones this year.

“Most IT [Information Technology] departments are not familiar with the growing number of CBRS-compatible products that are out there or how to obtain them,” Nelson said. “We are spending a lot of time helping our customers identify the devices they need as well as applications, whether that’s a push-to-talk, an IoT (Internet of Things) hub device or a tablet that can be configured with CBRS. We are going the distance to help our customers find the products that they need that makes the private LTE network useful for them, especially as connectivity services have essentially become utility-like.”

Being the industry’s easiest private LTE solution is just part of Geoverse’s mission—it also wants to be the best. So the company currently is focused on providing a service-level agreement to its enterprise customers so they understand the quality of service that the network will give them. Customers will get the service through the GeoCore platform, while the company’s GeoTrade marketplace measures the data to provide an understanding of the quality of the experiences and allow the enterprise to see how their network is performing.

“On being the ‘best’ we are including the capability to measure the network quality and to provide that critical data back to the enterprise so they always have a clear understanding of what they are getting,” Nelson said.

“It’s generally a tenant-by-tenant issue,” Nelson said. “We’re helping the business owner arrange for a high-capacity gigabit broadband connection to the building, which then gets distributed wirelessly through our CBRS network. We have relationships with multiple carriers to provide that broadband service as well.”

Geoverse also works with CRE owners to help them coordinate the fiber connectivity infrastructure necessary for a private LTE network to properly operate. Nelson points out that oftentimes the building has fiber access, but the CRE owner may not have the right kind of underlying connectivity service for their own use.

“It’s generally a tenant-by-tenant issue,” Nelson said. “We’re helping the business owner arrange for a high-capacity gigabit broadband connection to the building, which then gets distributed wirelessly through our CBRS network. We have relationships with multiple carriers to provide that broadband service as well.”

Outside of the private LTE network deployment process, other questions companies like Geoverse face from CRE owners pertain to the inner workings of the network itself. Enterprise clients want to know how private LTE with CBRS will differ from Wi-Fi, and how private LTE compares to Wi-Fi. Nelson notes there’s a role for both, but with CBRS, CRE owners have 150 MHz of shared spectrum that is highly engineered around delivering reliable performance vs. a typical “best effort” connectivity with Wi-Fi. There will be industry-standard Spectrum Access Service providers in place to ensure all the various systems using the CBRS service don’t interfere with one another.

“As a result, it’s dramatically better than the fully unlicensed environment that Wi-Fi has to operate in,” Nelson said. “It’s clean spectrum with reliable performance that we can engineer for the customer without the threat of random interference coming from people bringing in their own Wi-Fi devices. There is also a stronger security model with LTE [networks]. Those are a couple of dimensions we feel sets it apart.”

Additionally, compared to a commercial cellular network, private LTE allows a building owner or enterprise to enjoy the benefits of a private network they can move their critical applications on to. Geoverse gives users the ability to take their devices “off net” and gain access to the commercial cellular network—offering flexibility for the enterprise.

Geoverse also uses its numerous reseller agreements to serve as an intermediary between the enterprises and the Tier One wireless operators. Carriers do not have the scope or ability to contract directly with all the enterprises, so Geoverse has become a trusted partner between the two.

“We feel we’re ideally positioned to be that trusted partner because of our proven track record supporting Tier One operators as a large-scale wholesale roaming provider to them all. We are just taking that same model now to the in-building market. Rather than try to do roaming agreements as an enterprise, which is nearly impossible, you can simply connect your private LTE network with us and then we’ll manage it for the enterprise.”

As another key benefit, CRE owners and enterprises can leverage Geoverse’s private branch exchange (PBX) solution as a virtual extension of their own in-house legacy voice services, like abbreviated dialing. In this configuration, no additional apps are necessary and new users simply continue using their mobile device as they normally do, but now seamlessly have access to all supported PBX-type features. No need to strand existing investment or continue spending on legacy technology to add new users.

“This really exemplifies one of the benefits of LTE-based wireless versus Wi-Fi in that it has been engineered for a high-quality voice service with VoLTE (Voice over Long Term Evolution) industry standard,” Nelson said. “We’re using the same over-the-air protocols as VoLTE but connecting that to the company’s existing phone service.”

As CBRS becomes more readily available, the private LTE connectivity solution space will increasingly become more crowded and competitive. However, Nelson believes that Geoverse is well positioned to be one of the more innovative companies that can separate itself from the pack, given its operating experience and existing carrier relationships within the ATN International Group.

“The company is both a wholesale telecom operator as well as retail operator,” Nelson said. “We have all of the various operational support systems, customer service systems and a dedicated NOC (Network Operations Center) to be a trusted partner to both the enterprise and the carriers. We have the most complete and market-ready private LTE solution that can be ordered today. I’m really pleased with how far we’ve come putting this next-generation solution together.”

- Advertisement -
- Advertisment -spot_img

Industry News

- Advertisement -