Industry organization the CBRS Alliance touted its first OnGo interoperability test event as a major success this week and a significant milestone toward commercial deployments.
The tests, which were led by 16 participating member companies, achieved 98 percent completion rate with no recorded failures.
CBRS Alliance says the more than 50 successful interactions tested critical functions need to support all of the use cases for spectrum sharing in the 3.5 GHz band, including network densification, fixed wireless, neutral host, and private LTE for enterprise and industrial IoT use.
“While there have been a number of recent accomplishments toward commercial deployment, the technical achievements showcased by our members at last week’s Interoperability Test Event was by far one of the most significant milestones to date,” says Dave Wright, president of the CBRS Alliance, in a statement. “After a successful round of interoperability tests and with Initial Commercial Deployment (ICD) on the horizon, we are confident that OnGo-enabled business opportunities are imminent.”
The testing took place last week at CableLabs’ headquarters and involved five of the nation’s Spectrum Access System (SAS) Administrators: Amdocs, CommScope, Federated Wireless, Google, and Sony. Eleven device manufacturers also participated, including Airspan, Arris, Ericsson, and Fujitsu, among others.
“Last week’s Interoperability Test Event was an incredible illustration of the power of collaboration and as a result of this cooperation – across member organizations, industry liaisons and the CBRS Alliance Working Groups – we proved that the OnGo ecosystem will offer tremendous benefits to end users across market verticals,” says Alan Ewing, executive director of the CBRS Alliance. “Notably, this event provided the first ever connection attempt between certain devices and SASs. The connections were quickly made in each case and underscored the quality of the OnGo specifications and the maturity of vendor implementations.”
A variety of players are currently exploring use of the 3.5 GHz band, including cable operators like Comcast, Charter Communications, and Altice USA. As we reported in August, Altice USA is conducting wireless testing in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) 3.5 GHz band starting this month, with trials expected to wrap up by the end of February 2019.
