Summary and Acknowledgements

Summary

This report presents and analyzes aggregated and anonymized quarterly SAS FAD data from April 1, 2021, to July 1, 2024. The goal was to gain insight into the current state and growth of CBRS. Since its start, CBRS deployments increased at a steady rate. Over the analysis period, the total number of CBSDs with active grants increased by 270,621 CBSDs (208.5%) to 400,403. On July 1, 2024, 82.7% of all counties nationwide had at least one active CBSD, up from 56.4% on April 1, 2021. Both types of CBSDs, Category A and Category B, increased in number over the analysis period. In all quarterly datasets, Cat B CBSDs account for more than 95% of all active CBSDs. From April 1, 2021, to July 1, 2024, the number of active Cat B CBSDs increased by 253,692 (197.2%). Over the same period, Cat A CBSDs increased by 16,929 (1519.7%). Due to this greater relative growth the percentage of all active CBSDs which are Cat A has grown over time, from 0.9% on April 1, 2021, to 4.5% on July 1, 2024.

The percentage of CBSDs using an air interface other than E_UTRA or NR declined from 62.9% to 52.8% over the analysis period. E_UTRA declined from 37.1% of all active CBSDs on April 1, 2021, to 35.4% on July 1, 2024, and NR CBSDs increased from 0.0% to 11.9% over the same period. In addition to growth in the number of active CBSDs, CBRS also demonstrates growth in band utilization at the county level. Across all counties, the mean band utilization increased over the analysis period from 5.4 to 10.2 10 MHz channels granted. On July 1, 2024, 82.7% of all counties used at least 1 channel and 41% used all 15 channels.

A comparison of CBSD counts and channel grants between DPA-impacted and non-impacted counties revealed only small differences between the two groups. Both groups experienced steady growth in the mean number of CBSDs per county. Prior to January 1, 2024, non-impacted counties tended to have a slightly higher number of active CBSDs. However, this has reversed, as shown in the latest datasets from April and July 2024. On April 1, 2021, non-impacted counties had 1.2 more channels granted, on average, than DPA-impacted counties. On July 1, 2024, this difference was reduced to 0.12 more channels granted, on average. On July 1, 2024, there were 198,864 active CBSDs in DPA-impacted counties with a total population of 232,348,897 residents.

Notably, Priority Access spectrum usage increased steadily. In 2022, CBSDs with PAL grants increased by 27,185 and 2023 had a greater increase of 38,812. Continued growth in the first two quarters of 2024 brought the total number of CBSDs with a PAL to 114,682 (28.6% of the total) on July 1, 2024. However, GAA grants represented more than 82% of all active grants each quarter and 57.6% of the increase in CBSDs is due to GAA-only CBSDs. On July 1, 2024, 71.4% of CBSDs were GAA only, 94.9% of all CBSDs had GAA grants, and 82.2% of all active CBSDs using PAL grants were also granted at least one GAA grant.

Numbers of CBSDs in both urban and rural areas experienced steady increases. Over the analysis period, rural CBSDs more than doubled with an increase of 166,650 CBSDs (160.6%) over the 103,768 observed on April 1, 2021. On July 1, 2024, the 270,418 rural CBSDs represented 67.5% of all active CBSDs. While the majority of active CBSDs are deployed in rural areas, urban CBSDs also increased significantly. An increase of 103,960 urban CBSDs (399.9%) brought the total number of urban CBSDs to 129,956 (32.5% of the total) on July 1, 2024.

Acknowledgments

The authors and NTIA would like to thank the SAS Administrators and the FCC for their cooperation and assistance facilitating the analysis provided in this report. Without their support, this report would not have been possible.