CBRS Will Boost Communications Service Provider Capacity: 25% of Cellular, 26% of Wi-Fi Assets

One way of quantifying the potential impact of coming capacity (150 MHz of spectrum) in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) is to compare that block of capacity with what currently exists in the Wi-Fi bands (2.4 GHz; 5.2 to 5.8 GHz).

As a practical matter, in the U.S. market about 75 Mhz of capacity is available to use in the 2.4-GHz band, while some 500 MHz is potentially usable in the 5-GHz band.

So one way of looking at the coming CBRS capacity is that it increases U.S. communications spectrum by 26 percent of the total amount of Wi-Fi assets now available.

A better way of describing potential CBRS impact is to compare it with all presently licensed mobile capacity, which is in the range of 600 MHz for all providers in the market. So new CBRS capacity would boost capacity by about 25 percent of all presently-available U.S. mobile operator licensed spectrum.

source: Allnet