Latest from Next TV in Citizens-broadband-radio-service

New Ruckus Networks Chief Plans to Stay the Course

Jeff Baumgartner — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 21:11:47 +0000

Ian Whiting doesn’t expect to rock the boat when he officially takes the helm of Ruckus Networks on July 1.

Whiting is stepping in then as president of Arris’s Enterprise Networks unit, which includes the wireless/mobile-focused Ruckus, said he intends to move ahead with a strategy that he forged with Dan Rabinovitsj, the person he is succeeding in that role.

Ian Whiting

“I don’t anticipate needing to make any changes to strategy,” he said, noting that he, who has been serving as Ruckus’s chief strategy officer, worked closely with Rabinovitsj, on the integration following Arris’s acquisition of Ruckus late last year.

“I think we share the same view of where we fit into the industry,” Whiting said. “That’s the plan – to stick with it.”

He said the general focus is for Ruckus to continue to focus on its key verticals, expand on the service provider market, and broaden the international scope of its business.

Whiting will be taking over as the relatively new Enterprise unit of Arris is performing well in the early going.

And part of the plan going forward is to have Ruckus Networks play a more prominent role in the growing Internet of Things market, edge computing, and the opportunities ahead for CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service), an emerging shared swath of spectrum that will play a big role in new private LTE networks and factor into cable’s mobile and wireless tech and service strategies.

IoT presents the nearer-term opportunity, as Ruckus has already begun to ship IoT gateway products.

The CBRS sector is in the early adopter phase as the FCC and other agencies iron out rules for the spectrum, but it’s also “building quite a head of steam,” he said.

Arris, he added, has been required to put more resources into that as it responds to demand from customers that are pushing ahead on trials and proof-on-concept deployments, including some early, paid opportunities. CBRS is also enabling Ruckus to enter new markets, Whiting said.

Whiting said Ruckus is also poised to jump on the market for 802.11ax WiFi, adding that upgrades to a new WiFi standard historically given the company a significant lift as customers deploy new access points and switching gear (in addition to Ruckus, Arris also acquired an ICX Switch business via its deal with Broadcom) to handle denser, higher-capacity networks.

Although much of the mobile and wireless discussion tends to focus on the U.S. and Western Europe, Whiting said Ruckus is also keeping tabs on opportunities in emerging markets, such as India, the Philippines, and Africa, where investments are being made in basic infrastructure.

Arris M&A Strategy to Focus on ‘Near-Adjacencies’

Jeff Baumgartner — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 18:01:00 +0000

Bruce McClelland

Following its recent acquisition of Ruckus Wireless, a move that enhanced Arris's focus on the wireless and enterprise sectors, Arris will continue to seek out deals that can broaden its addressable market.

That means it won’t be going off on any wild tangents but rather stick to its new knitting, which is all about providing connectivity – wired and wireless – to consumers and businesses.

With regard to future M&A, “We’re looking for opportunities that are near-adjacencies to what we’ve in today, things that logically build on top of the businesses that we’re in, so it’s easier to get synergies,” Arris CEO Bruce McClelland said Wednesday on the company’s investor day, held in New York. “One-plus-one equals more than two…We’re looking at things that are accretive to the business going forward.”

“I really believe that M&A is a core part of what we need to do,” Dave Potts, Arris’s EVP and CTO, added later. “I think it is a place that we will want to continue to try to put dollars to work.”

McClelland didn’t identify any specific companies on Arris’s M&A radar, but did spell out some areas that would qualify to be on it, including the enterprise sector, security, as well as opportunities to bolster its traditional infrastructure business, including wireless, transport and optical transmission.

But a primary focus of Arris’s capital strategy will be in R&D, which will grow to $700 million this year, thanks in part to the Ruckus acquisition. R&D is “really the fuel for the business…that’s the best possible use of cash in the business,” McClelland said.

Arris’s investor day spanned the scope of its business. Here’s a snapshot of some specific areas that were covered:

Waxing Wireless

Starting with what Arris has with the new Ruckus Networks unit on board, the company plans to take advantage of a wireless LAN arena with a total addressable market of $15 to $17 billion and one that is growing at 8% to 10% a year.

Of note, the company is anticipating a transition to 802.11ax that will that will also create push to new edge campus switching technologies, and drive “secular upgrades” into product areas that Ruckus has covered, Dan Rabinovitsj, president of Arris Enterprise Networks, said.

Arris, through Ruckus Networks, is also getting positioned for the needs of the enterprise Internet of Things market, as well as opportunities that will come way of CBRS, a swath of shared spectrum in the 3.5GHz band that will be used by incumbents as well as for unlicensed and lightly licensed use by others, including cable operators.

For enterprise IoT, Ruckus plan centers on consolidating the physical layer access networks into a unified IoT network using access points with IoT modules that can support a fragmented group of standards and technologies, including Bluetooth Low Energy, Zigbee and LoRA.

“This fragmentation has been a huge problem,” Rabinovitsj said. “We’re PHY-agnostic…we have zero religion about this.”

He said Apple and others are remedying this issue in the consumer sphere by building their own technology silos. But that approach won’t fly with enterprise customers, he said.

Steve Martin, Ruckus’s CTO, expanded on the CBRS initiative at the company, noting that the shared spectrum approach in the 3.5GHz band represents a “breakthrough,” and a significant opportunity.

“Spectrum is like beachfront property…they’re not making any more of it,” he said.

The CBRS opportunity, which will use spectrum allocation servers to keep users in that band from interfering with each other, has drawn interest from a wide range of segments, including cable operators that view it as a way to augment mobile service that are leaning on MVNO agreements.

“The trials are getting bigger and more sophisticated,” he added, noting the largest one spans some 90 nodes covering both indoor and outdoor locations across multiple city blocks.

“This stuff is real,” he said. “Frankly our pipeline is limited by our ability to handle the trial requests at this point, so we're being very opportunistic about it.”

The Drive Toward Distributed Access

A portion of Arris’s discussion about what’s going on in the wired part of the network centered on cable’s push toward distributed access architectures (DAA), which push functions and electronics further out on the network and into the node.

As a sign of momentum there, Arris announced today that Danish service provider Stofa has launched what’s being billed as Europe’s first Gigabit internet service based on the remote PHY spec. To enable it Stofa is using Arris’s flagship CCAP, the E6000, with a software upgrade that pairs with the vendor’s NC2000 R-PHY optical nodes.

The move to DAA also gets cable operators into the world of digital optics, which opens to door to new competitors that want to jump into the investment cycle to come.

“Who knew that HFC was cool again?” McClelland joked. “It will be competitive. There are lots of people who would like a piece of that, and it’s going to grow over time. I would rather be where we are than where everybody else is."

On Arris’s consumer premises equipment (CPE) side of the house, share has been gradually shifting more heavily toward broadband devices – the currently mix is still dominated by video (60%) as broadband (40%) continues to close the gap.

Larry Robinson, president of Arris's CPE business, reiterated that, for set-tops, the company will try to grow share selectively with an emphasis on margin and a continued pursuit of cost-reduction programs as rising memory costs remain an issue.

There’s a “maniacal focus on streamlining business operations,” Robinson said.

As for trends, Robinson said integration of 4K and HDR technologies are part of the evolution, as well as voice-based navigation, and whole-home WiFi capabilities. There’s also an opportunity emerging to build far-field microphones into traditional CPE products as ambient voice capabilities become a more important component of smart home solutions.

“There’s even talk of 8K,” driving a number of new use cases for video, Robinson said. However, 8K currently is “off the charts in terms of price.”

On the broadband side, about 10% of Arris’s CPE for cable operators re DOCSIS 3.1, and Arris sees that rising to the 75% to 80% range in 2021.

Ruckus Gears Up for CBRS Band

Jeff Baumgartner — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 13:06:00 +0000

Ruckus Networks, the wireless-focused tech company acquired late last year by Arris, has introduced a new lineup of LTE-based products, including access points and a spectrum allocation server, aimed at the emerging market for the 3.5 GHz Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS) band.

That portfolio, introduced ahead of the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, is entering the fray as the shared-use CBRS band – a 150 MHz chunk of spectrum in the 3.55 Gigahertz to 3.7 GHz range -- becomes a focal point for traditional mobile carriers, cable operators and neutral-host service providers.

Ruckus’s CBRS band LTE portfolio includes the Ruckus Q710, a 3.5 GHz indoor access point/small cell with 10,000 square feet of coverage, the Q910, a 3.5 GHz outdoor AP/small cell that can cover a 660-foot city block, and a cloud-based element management system. ts CBRS product suite also includes pro services from Arris (for network planning and deployment, the cEPC (a cloud-based evolved packet core), and the cSAS, a cloud-based spectrum allocation server that is being marketed as an optional subscription service.

The spectrum allocation server is a key product component for the CBRS band's shared spectrum environment, as it ensures that new use cases for licensed and unlicensed capacity in that band do not interfere with incumbent users such as the U.S. Navy. Notably, Arris and one of its top customers, Charter Communications, are investors in Federated Wireless, a startup that specializes in spectrum allocation servers and systems and recently introduced a product interoperability program.

Ruckus said the new CBRS-focused portfolio is in trials today, with availability to come following anticipated FCC certification in the shared-use band.

Ruckus didn’t identify trial partners. In the cable world, Comcast and Charter have either started CBRS trials or have plans underway to test small cells that, for example, might be used to offset some of the network costs for mobile services that lean on MVNO agreements.

The CBRS/LTE access points being announced today are the first two of a larger, more comprehensive product line, as some will be capable of snapping onto existing Ruckus-made access points, according to Mark Davis, Ruckus’s senior director of product marketing.

When combined with the subscription services and other elements, the product suite is shaping up as a “CBRS in a box” solution, he said, estimating that Ruckus has more than 20 trials underway with operators of various shapes and sizes.

Ruckus also introduced a suite of Internet of Things products focused on enterprises and to address the complexities that some IoT solution vendors have created using vertically-integrated systems.

“IoT is an extraordinarily complex beast” as many of today's IoT solutions don’t talk to each other, Davis said.

The idea behind Ruckus’s approach is to consolidate the physical layer access networks into a unified IoT network. Those components include IoT-ready access points, IoT modules (based on standards such as Bluetooth Low Energy, Zigbee and LoRA, and IoT controller that works with the company’s existing SmartZone wireless LAN controller.

The result aims to create a common infrastructure between the wireless local area network and the IoT access network.

Ruckus also announced ecosystem partnerships with several IoT companies, including Assa Abloy Hospitality (smart security), LoRaWAN network specialist Actility, IBM (for its Watson IoT platform), Kontakt.io, TrackR, and Tile, a company that has developed an electronic beacon system that tracks a person’s belongings.

Comcast Wants to Test CBRS in Philly

Jeff Baumgartner — Thu, 15 Feb 2018 20:05:00 +0000

Comcast is seeking permission from the FCC to conduct tests in Philadelphia using the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band, a batch of shared spectrum that's poised to play into cable’s longer-term mobile and wireless strategies.

In a request to the FCC,spotted by FierceWireless, Comcast is asking the Commission to provide an experimental license to conduct tests in that emerging shared-spectrum band for one year, starting on March 1. More specifically, Comcast is eyeing trials using the 3650-3700 MHz band

The CBRS band, a 150 MHz-wide batch of spectrum in the range of 3.55 GHz to 3.7 GHz, has been underutilized, with most of it used today by the U.S. Navy for flight operations for aircraft carriers, along with some satellite uplinks.

In addition to supporting incumbent users, the spectrum will also be allocated for licensed (Priority Access Licenses) and unlicensed use (general authorized access). Comcast is seeking permission as the FCC works up rules that govern CBRS.

Cable operators are interested in CBRS in part to complement their mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreements so they can offset some of the network costs associated with new mobile services. Comcast is already well down the MVNO path with Xfinity Mobile using its agreement with Verizon. Charter Communications, which is also running tests in the CBRS band, is working on a mobile service that will also lean on an MVNO deal with Verizon.

Comcast said it aims to conduct pre-commercial field trials in the CBRS band to evaluate elements such as coverage, throughput, and mobility of equipment and facilities that are operating in that band.

For the test, Comcast is eyeing outdoor and indoor fixed and mobile trials in a “small targeted portion of the Philadelphia” that’s in Comcast’s service footprint within a radius of 7 kilometers.

Comcast also acknowledged that its work must be conducted without interfering with incumbent users of the band.

Google and Federated Wireless, which has already acknowledged that it’s working with Comcast and Charter (Charter’s also an investor in Federated Wireless) on CBRS-facing work, have developed cloud-based spectrum allocation controller platforms that ensure that new entrants don’t interfere with incumbent users in the shared band.

Though Philadelphia is located within the NTIA’s coastal exclusion zone for operations in the 3550-3650 MHz band, Comcast said its application for the test only seeks authority to test operations in the 3650-3700 MHz band. Comcast also said that it hasn’t identified any Fixed Satellite Service earth stations operating in the 3650-3700 MHz band where testing will occur.

Still, Comcast said it will also establish a point of contact that has the authority and ability to disable all transmission when notified if tests interfere with any primary-licensed services.

Charter recently told the FCC its tests in the CBRS band has delivered speeds of at least 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream.

Federated Wireless Takes Aim at CBRS Ecosystem

Jeff Baumgartner — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 13:00:00 +0000

Federated Wireless, a wireless tech company working with operators such as Charter Communications and Comcast, said it intends to accelerate the deployment of Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS)-based platforms using a new partner program that’s focused on fostering product integration and interoperability across multiple suppliers.

Federated Wireless said the free, new partner program will enable equipment makers focused on CBRS to automate “critical” functions as they integrate with the company’s Wireless Spectrum Controller, including onboarding, testing and support. Heading up Federated Wireless’s dedicated support team for the new partner initiative is Emer Marchetti, the company’s VP of solutions development and operations.

Example of vendors that are already on board with the new partner program include Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung Electronics America, Huawei, Askey Computer Corp., Airspan Networks, ZTE, Telrad Networks, Cambium Networks, and Ruckus Wireless, the wireless/mobile technology company acquired by Arris late last year.

Program participants get as set of materials that includes training modules, a user guide, Federated Wireless Spectrum Controller product documentation, release notes, a feature guide and API documentation. Federated Wireless believes that that program will enable OEMs to move from quickly from initial onboarding to interoperability testing to commercial deployment, when FCC certification is completed.

Federated Wireless’s new program is emerging as mobile carriers, cable operators and others start to fixate plans involving a 150 Megahertz-wide swath of what will become shared-use CBRS spectrum that lives in the 3.55 Gigahertz to 3.7 GHz range.

It’s been an underutilized asset (the U.S. Navy taps into it for flight operations for aircraft carriers, for example), but will soon be opened up to a broader range of use cases, including enhancing services that currently use licensed spectrum. Cable operators are also eyeing it as a wireless data options that can complement their MVNO agreements and offset or lower some of the network costs associated with mobile service.

Federated Wireless launched its product commercially last October in the form of a cloud-powered spectrum controller/platform that ensures that new apps and use cases do not interfere with incumbents that are also using the CBRS band.

Iyad Tarazi, Federated Wireless’s president and CEO, estimates that his company is currently involved in about 30 trials that are processing about 250,000 transactions per day.

As the number of trials and companies involved continue to rise, so has the need to provide another level of automation to help manage this growing ecosystem, Tarazi said of the new partner program.

Some service providers, for example, are looking for a certain number of OEM to be compliant and integrated while also keeping pace with their roadmaps, and have a let up when

Automating that interoperability process will help those vendors integrate faster while also keep pace with changes, Tarazi said.

Federated Wireless intends to demo its new partner program at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which gets underway on February 26.

CBRS Spectrum to Open Windows of Opportunity for Cable Ops

Jeff Baumgartner — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 12:14:00 +0000

As cable operators form and evolve their mobile and wireless strategies, a swath of spectrum that’s opening up could very well take them down a new path that can not only enhance their existing offerings but also open doors to new ones.

That all centers on Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), a 150 MHz-wide batch of what will become shared-use spectrum living in the range of 3.55 GHz to 3.7 GHz. The FCC established rules for enabling that shared-spectrum band in April 2015.

That spectrum has been underutilized, with the bulk of it used by the U.S. Navy for flight operations for aircraft carriers, along with some satellite uplinks.

The FCC rules create a way to reapply that lightly-used spectrum to complement and enhance the limited pool of licensed spectrum that carriers have paid dearly for.

But the rules also support an engineering-focused approach to ensure that usage of the CBRS band doesn’t interfere with the incumbent users in the form of new spectrum allocation servers that are authorized by the FCC. Generally, those servers check for interference issues with the Navy, for example, before providing a spectrum grant in the CBRS band.

CBRS radios will need to be in constant contact with the spectrum allocation servers, and there’s work underway to build a sensor network along the coastline to detect Navy flight operations. If there is an interference issue, the radios would be commanded to move to a clean channel.

“It’s like a grand experiment,” Steve Martin, chief technology officer of Ruckus Wireless, said, noting that the coordinated, shared aspects of CBRS are unique.

CBRS is being set up as a three-tier system, with the top level for the Navy and other incumbents, a middle, priority access license layer that covers a portion of the band that will be tied to future FCC spectrum auctions, and a general authorized access layer. If licenses aren’t taken, that spectrum will also be open to unlicensed use.

That middle layer, Martin said, could be licensed by a service provider to hit a certain area that has a clear channel, and could also be cheap enough for an airport, for example, to license a 10 MHz slice to serve the facility.

One company that’s placing a big bet on CBRS and spectrum controller systems is Federated Wireless, which recently wrapped up a $42 million “B” round that included participation from two big names from the cable industry -- Charter Communications and Arris, which is in the process of acquiring Ruckus Wireless. The system Federated Wireless is building will run on a cloud-based service, network of sensors that identify and protect incumbent users of the CBRS band, spectrum sharing tools, and an “open” ecosystem for CBRS-based products.

“From our point of view, this is an absolutely fascinating area,” Duncan Potter, senior vice president of marketing, said of CBRS.

The rules around CBRS don’t speak to specific types of radios, but it’s viewed as a major opportunity for LTE-based technology. The CBRS Alliance (Federated Wireless, Comcast, Ruckus Wireless, Charter, Comcast and Cox are among its members ) is evangelizing LTE-based solutions in the CBRS band for in-building and outdoor coverage, holding in part that it will help to ensure product interoperability.

“It doesn’t take a lot of effort to move the needle on chipsets and that while ecosystem to support it,” Martin said, noting that the spectrum for CBRS is gaining momentum worldwide as an LTE mobile band. Theoretically, it could be implemented for WiFi, but that would make it unique to the U.S. and make it less commercially desirable, he said.

“The first segment of companies that are going after this are the cable companies, especially the leading cable companies,” Imran Akbar, vice president and general manager, wireless enterprise, at Samsung Electronics America, said.

But what, precisely will CBRS have to do with cable? Plenty of potential use cases are emerging.

The CBRS band could, for example, help MSOs get access to spectrum that augments the spectrum they are using in their MVNO deals. Comcast is using that model for Xfinity Mobile (with Verizon as the partner) and Charter has similar plans underway.

While the MVNO gets them into the mobile business, terms were negotiated years ago, with certain fixed costs, and it’s likely that Verizon wouldn’t be champing at the bit to give everyone a better deal.

It’s possible that cable operators will build CBRS-based small cells and supply the backhaul, effectively accessing capacity and spectrum that is less expensive than what comes way of their MVNO agreements.

Martin said it could make sense for an operator to build out CBRS infrastructure in areas with high concentrations of subscribers. When customers aren’t in reach of that network, they roam to the MVNO network.

“The economics are good for [CBRS] spectrum, and it’s good spectrum, too,” said Ralph Brown, chief technology officer at CableLabs, which is also a member of the CBRS Alliance and contributing to its scope of work. The CBRS work adds to that it’s doing with technologies such as WiFi and 5G. “The broader strategy we’re pursuing is to make sure our members have competitive positions in any one of those [areas], depending on what their business objectives are,” Brown said.

Cable operators might also use CBRS as a fixed wireless technology that helps them reach areas that are not covered by their wired networks, or as a solution for business service customers that want to beef up wireless coverage in their buildings.

Citing the airport example, Samsung’s Akbar said CBRS will open the door to “neutral host companies” that build the infrastructure there and sell access to carriers. That same model could be used in multiple-dwelling unit sites, he added.

Potter said the proximity of HFC and fiber networks make them well-positioned to backhaul CBRS-powered services, noting that their nodes are essentially “beachfront property” for such use.

But the exact timing of when this will all come together, though some in the industry hope it will be ironed out by the FCC in the first half of 2018, with buildouts to follow in the second half.

“We are neck-deep in trials today with cable companies and starting with some neutral cost companies and tower companies,” Akbar said, predicting that CBRS will begin to take off in a big way by 2020.

Shared Spectrum: Path to Wireless Expansion

Iyad Tarazi, Federated Wireless — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 17:45:00 +0000

I’ve been in the wireless industry for several years, and I can honestly say that I’m seeing something I haven’t seen before — a rapidly developing wireless technology ripe for innovation — especially among cable operators. I’m talking about spectrum sharing in the 3.5-Gigahertz Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band. If your business development and technology teams are not already exploring the opportunity, they should.

Historically, there have been two vehicles for cable operators to add a mobile option to their networks — either spend billions in expensive Federal Communications Commission spectrum auctions and then spend billions more to build out a cellular network, or create an MVNO agreement with a mobile network operator. Several U.S. cable companies have already taken the first step with updated MVNO agreements, which is a great start. The next step will be to determine where to further invest wireless budgets. Shared spectrum offers a new, cost-effective opportunity.

The 3.5-GHz band has historically been used by the Department of Defense and fixed-satellite service providers, but it is now being opened up by the FCC for commercial use through a unique spectrum-sharing framework that will make spectrum available for the delivery of LTE services without requiring a license. As a result, cable operators can enhance their indoor and outdoor WiFi networks with LTE, enabling them to expand relationships with their enterprise and residential customers with new mobile services. Spectrum sharing promises the quality and capacity of LTE, at the cost and ease of deployment of WiFi.

In a paper I recently completed with Mobile Ecosystem’s Mark Lowenstein, we outlined several benefits that shared spectrum can offer cable operators, including:
■ Lower barrier to offering wireless services. Historically, the only way an MSO could offer wireless services has been through expensive spectrum auctions or doing an MVNO deal with a wireless operator. Spectrum sharing represents a faster, more flexible, and more economically viable alternative.

■ Complement to broadband and WiFi. MSOs can cost effectively add LTE to their millions of installed APs, offering coverage extension and capacity augmentation. This can be translated into higher quality of service for existing customers, or potentially incremental B2C and B2B revenue opportunities through a premium service offering.

■ Cellular offload service. Cable operators have relied on carrier WiFi deployments to offer a cellular offload service. Shared spectrum presents a secure, cost-effective, higher-capacity alternative.

■ Premium enterprise services. Broadband/WiFi services to enterprises have been a fast-growing business for MSOs. Shared spectrum’s capacity and coverage augmentation capabilities can be used to offer a premium in-building cellular service to customers.

■ Wireless MVNO. Shared spectrum makes the wireless MVNO business case eminently more viable, reducing cost and dependency on the host MVNO. A hybrid mobile network combining WiFi, shared spectrum, an MVNO relationship and perhaps owned spectrum assets could be a compelling opportunity.

I truly believe that cable operators are in a unique position to take advantage of CBRS to expand their wireless networks. They have the enterprise and consumer relationships. They have extensive WiFi networks that can be leveraged. MSOs are in the business of disruption. Spectrum sharing is the new frontier, and the opportunity is there for the taking.

Iyad Tarazi is CEO of Federated Wireless, an Arlington, Va.-based wireless technology firm.