- UScellular was getting such good uptake of its fixed wireless in a Missouri town, it was running out of capacity and unable to sell more of the product
- It decided to work with Tarana to add more capacity to its network
- UScellular and Tarana are using CBRS GAA spectrum for the project in Missouri
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. Today, UScellular said it’s working with Tarana Wireless to increase its FWA capacity in West Plains, Missouri, a town where the demand for FWA is high.
The carrier has been getting such good uptake of its fixed wireless in West Plains that it was about to run out of capacity on its mobile network. So, it 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.
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 licensed spectrum, while 30% used unlicensed. 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. Alwin said Tarana’s technology is “really built for fixed wireless.” The company has especially made a name for itself with its proprietary interference cancellation.
“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.
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.”
