For Immediate Release 

October 6, 2026

Contact: [email protected]

In case you missed it – The National League of Cities’ “CBRS in Action” panel demonstrated how the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band is transforming connectivity on the ground, enabling schools, airports, municipalities, and other institutions to build private wireless networks tailored to their specific operating needs.

The panel featured leaders from Murray City School District in Utah and Miami International Airport, both of whom have deployed CBRS networks to address unique challenges in their communities. Jason Eyre of Murray City School District described how CBRS helped bridge the homework gap, allowing the district to provide wireless connectivity to students who lacked home internet access. “We started with the use case of the homework gap in mind, and we realized we had a network that will do so much more than that,” Eyre said. When the pandemic hit, the network proved invaluable for remote learning. “We’ve been really pleased with the security and stability that this technology provides,” he added.

At Miami International Airport, Johnathan Lewis detailed how CBRS evolved into a comprehensive platform driving operational innovation for “pretty much everything that moves,” and described how the band now supports traffic management, passenger behavior analysis, airfield operations, and dozens of connected devices generating real-time insights.

Panelist Jerry Leverich of Salt Point Strategies provided broader context: more than 450,000 CBRS devices have been deployed across the United States, spanning hospitals, manufacturing, retail, hospitality, education, and rural broadband–a deployment scale that rivals what major carriers have achieved. “CBRS is one of those rare spectrum policies that came down from the federal government, but that really puts communities in the driver’s seat,” Leverich said.

The panel also emphasized the importance of preserving CBRS’ low-power, locally-licensed design and cautioned that proposals to increase power levels could fundamentally alter the band’s character. When asked about the threat of raising power level, Johnathan Lewis of Miami International Airport stated it clearly: “Yes, [raising power levels] would be a serious threat to us operationally. Actually, if that happened, we just would need to shut it down because it wouldn’t be useful at that point for us at MIA.”

Miami International Airport is just one example of the devastating impacts that more than 1,000 CBRS networks could incur if the power levels and technical requirements of CBRS are altered. A recent study by Valo Analytica entitled “Negative Impacts of Higher-Power Operation on the Citizens Broadband Radio Service,” illustrates how higher power levels could significantly undermine network operations, business plans and investments, and the innovation that the CBRS band was carefully designed to foster. Learn more here: https://spectrumfuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/SFTF-Valo-Study-One-Pager.pdf 

To avoid these consequences, the FCC should preserve the current power framework and avoid undermining the investments and innovation enabled by CBRS’s successful spectrum sharing model.