For Immediate Release

January 16, 2026

Contact: [email protected]

In case you missed it – Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis, cautioned policymakers against actions that could quietly erode the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), particularly the General Authorized Access (GAA) tier, in a recent column for Broadband Breakfast. 

“GAA is where most of the real innovation in CBRS has happened,” Bubley writes, noting that schools, manufacturers, rural WISPs, utilities, airports, hospitals, and neutral-host providers rely on dynamic, shared access to deploy private and localized 5G networks. “Undermining GAA would disproportionately harm the long tail of innovators who depend on permissionless access to spectrum…Policymakers should avoid disrupting a world-leading ecosystem that supports U.S. jobs, competitiveness, and community connectivity. CBRS—and especially GAA—represents the future of flexible, shared spectrum, not a problem to be solved.”

American companies and other users across the vast CBRS ecosystem, including farmers, emergency services, and rural internet service providers, continue to worry that CBRS could be targeted indirectly by policymakers as they rush to identify available spectrum to meet ambitious federal targets. 

Bubley argues that approaches such as slicing spectrum from the top of the band for auction or increasing power levels and loosening interference limits would significantly reduce the usefulness of GAA or render it unworkable altogether, crowding out smaller operators and enterprises in favor of large, high-power networks.

Read Dean Bubley’s full column here.

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CBRS GAA is Critical for US Wireless Innovation

Broadband Breakfast

January 16, 2026

The recent Americas Spectrum conference in Washington, DC had a central focus on changes to mobile and unlicensed spectrum bands, as well as satellite frequencies and operations.

The OBBBA mandate to the FCC and NTIA to find 800MHz of spectrum for auction was referenced in almost every session, as well as in conversations among attendees outside the hall. While the mobile industry is very enthusiastic, various other existing users and licensees of bands below <10GHz are concerned that they may be forced to move or consolidate operations, to provide space. 

One of the topics under discussion was the future of the shared CBRS band, between 3.55-3.7GHz. This is used by a variety of wireless carriers, rural wireless ISPs (WISPs), cable operators, enterprises and in-building coverage specialists – as well as defense-sector incumbents.

In particular, there appear to be worrying risks for the third tier of users, known as “general authorized access” (GAA) operators, which is a hugely diverse group of organizations ranging from schools to manufacturers, as well as many WISPs and others. This group has dynamic access to the parts of the CBRS band which are “left over” after the incumbents and licensed PAL (Priority Access License) users are protected.

Read the rest of the article at Broadband Breakfast.