For Immediate Release
April 17, 2026
Contact: [email protected]
In case you missed it – Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis, warned in a new Broadband Breakfast column that proposals to raise power limits in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band could seriously undermine one of the country’s most successful wireless innovation ecosystems.
Bubley explains that CBRS was designed as a shared spectrum band that supports a wide mix of users through a carefully balanced framework, making it possible for local and lower-power networks to coexist. Drawing on new analysis from Valo Analytica, he cautions that high-power CBRS would crowd out existing low- and mid-power users, threatening private networks, rural broadband providers, airports, manufacturers, and other enterprise users that rely on and have invested billions in investment in the band today.
“Policymakers should be protecting and replicating this sort of wireless innovation,” Bubley wrote. “Instead, the ecosystem is put at risk by large national wireless carriers seeking more semi-exclusive spectrum, while weakening the competition, innovation and supplier diversity that CBRS has enabled. Such a rule change could also undermine confidence in future FCC auctions if bidders fear that spectrum rights may be materially altered only a few years later.”
Bubley points to case studies involving John Deere manufacturing plants, Miami International Airport, and Ohio-based rural provider Amplex Internet to show how higher-power operations could degrade private industrial networks, reduce capacity for critical infrastructure, and worsen interference for broadband providers already serving hard-to-reach communities.
Read Dean Bubley’s full column here.
The Danger of High-Power CBRS Proposals
Broadband Breakfast
April 10, 2026
The U.S. Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum band has been a major success since its 2020 commercial launch. Yet it now faces a serious threat from a proposed rule change backed by a few companies.
A new study has forensically examined the effects of higher-power operations and found that they could swamp lower-power users, undermining the core premise of the “innovation band” and its carefully balanced sharing framework.
That matters because CBRS now supports more than 400,000 low- and mid-power base stations used by enterprises, local broadband providers, major carriers and other innovative network operators. It serves a wide range of applications across sectors including airports, healthcare, energy and education.
Another study released in March highlights how embedded CBRS has become in the manufacturing sector. It is a world-leading approach to commercial wireless networks coexisting with incumbent federal and defense users in the same band. Such “dynamic sharing” models are becoming ever more important, as spectrum scarcity means commercial and government users compete for limited frequency resources.
Policymakers should be protecting and replicating this sort of wireless innovation. Instead, the ecosystem is put at risk by large national wireless carriers seeking more semi-exclusive spectrum, while weakening the competition, innovation and supplier diversity that CBRS has enabled. Such a rule change could also undermine confidence in future FCC auctions if bidders fear that spectrum rights may be materially altered only a few years later.
Read the rest of the article at Broadband Breakfast.