The Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) has quickly become a cornerstone of wireless innovation in the United States. Often referred to as “America’s Innovation Band,” CBRS enables a diverse range of users, from manufacturers and hospitals to rural broadband providers, to deploy reliable, high-performance wireless networks using a shared spectrum model.
That success is no accident. CBRS works because of a carefully designed framework that allows many users to coexist without interference, including power limits that keep networks operating efficiently side by side.
A new study by Valo Analytica underscores just how critical that balance is. The analysis finds that increasing CBRS power limits could significantly disrupt existing operations, undermine investment, and weaken the very ecosystem that has made the band so successful.
Why power limits matter in the CBRS
CBRS was designed to maximize spectrum use by enabling shared access across thousands of users. Today, more than 1,000 operators and over 430,000 base stations rely on this model to deliver connectivity across virtually every sector of the economy.
That level of scale depends on one key principle: keeping interference in check.
- Low power enables sharing. It allows multiple users to operate in close proximity without disrupting one another.
- Higher power expands interference. As signal strength increases, so does the geographic footprint of interference, limiting how many users can coexist.
- The result is less access for most users. Even small increases in high-power deployments could crowd out existing operations and reduce overall spectrum availability.
The study makes clear that CBRS’s success is rooted in this balance, and that changing it could have cascading effects across the ecosystem.
What’s at stake for networks across the economy
The analysis highlights how even limited adoption of higher-power operations could have outsized impacts:
- Converting fewer than 2% of base stations to higher power could result in the loss of more than 65,000 channels, significantly reducing data throughput across the band.
- A single high-power deployment could preempt shared use across thousands of square kilometers, limiting access to channels that 96% of CBRS users rely on today.
- Existing technologies and rules are not designed to manage this level of interference, increasing the risk of widespread service degradation.
These impacts would not be isolated. They would ripple across industries that depend on CBRS for mission-critical connectivity, including manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, agriculture, and education.
Real-world impacts: Case studies from the field
The study highlights how higher power levels could affect real-world deployments across key sectors:
- Manufacturing (John Deere): CBRS supports robotics and real-time automation in smart factories. Interference from a nearby high-power device could disrupt these systems and reduce coverage in factory facilities and office deployments to just a few meters, effectively rendering portions of the network unusable.
- Airports (Miami International Airport): Airports rely on CBRS for critical communications, including safety and security systems. A single high-power deployment could cut one-third of the airport’s network capacity, with no clear regulatory remedy, putting key operations at risk.
- Rural Broadband (Amplex Internet): Rural providers depend on CBRS to deliver reliable internet to underserved communities. Cross-border interference from higher-power operations is already disrupting an existing CBRS network and could further degrade network reliability for rural users.
Together, these examples show how changes to CBRS power levels could affect not just individual networks, but also the communities and industries that rely on them.
Protecting a proven model for innovation
CBRS has earned its reputation as “America’s Innovation Band” by enabling efficient spectrum sharing at scale. It is supporting new use cases, advancing private networks, and expanding connectivity in both urban and rural areas.
The study reinforces what industry stakeholders have long recognized. The band’s success depends on maintaining the technical framework that makes sharing possible.
Preserving the balance that supports coexistence, investment, and innovation will be key to ensuring CBRS continues to deliver for the diverse set of users who rely on it today and those who will depend on it in the future.
