CBRS Alliance rebrands to OnGo Alliance

The CBRS Alliance, an industry organization focused on driving the development, commercialization, and adoption of OnGo shared spectrum platforms, on Jan. 11 announced it is expanding its mission to encompass 3GPP technologies operating in shared spectrum bands globally, leveraging its members’ recent successes in commercializing the CBRS band in the United States. To align with this broader objective, the organization announced it is changing its name to the OnGo Alliance.

The group notes that over the past five years, the CBRS Alliance and its nearly 200 members have contributed significant amounts of time, energy, and innovation to develop reliable, secure, and cost-effective wireless services for the 3.5 GHz CBRS band. Since the authorization of full commercial service in early 2020, the industry has seen extensive adoption of OnGo systems. To date, numerous OnGo networks have been deployed to satisfy a wide range of use cases, including mobile broadband, fixed wireless access, and enterprise private networks. The private deployments include a variety of sectors, covering education, healthcare, manufacturing, transportation and more.

Through its efforts in bringing OnGo solutions to market successfully, the Alliance notes it has developed considerable know-how on building an ecosystem, identifying and resolving policy and technical issues, stimulating wireless markets, and building industry consensus. The applicability of much of this work extends beyond the CBRS band and the shores of the United States.

"Following the success of OnGo commercialization, the FCC, NTIA, and DoD are actively considering other bands for sharing. Additionally, the Alliance is being contacted by international organizations that would like to engage and become affiliated," observes Alan Ewing, Executive Director of the OnGo Alliance. “Success in the CBRS band has shown the viability of spectrum sharing in other bands and geographies. The responsible next step would be to recast the Alliance as an organization dedicated to enabling 3GPP based technologies in shared spectrum.”

The Alliance says its broad knowledge and experience in the CBRS band will be critical to successfully enabling 3GPP technologies in other shared spectrum bands. Per a statement from the organization, the major benefits of broadening the scope of the organization include the following:

• "The work that has been undertaken by the CBRS Alliance on technical specifications would form the basis of a new set of specifications that would encompass other bands."
• "The specifications should enable a consistent coexistence framework across networks in a range of frequency bands."
• "Deployment and Operational best practices, which are now being implemented in production, would be replicable in other bands."

"It is critical to note that the OnGo Alliance's work in the CBRS band will continue uninterrupted," added the statement. "The OnGo Alliance will now be a potential resource to anyone looking to enable 3GPP-based services in shared spectrum bands, wherever they may be located."

As further defined by the group's mission statement:

An innovative approach to maximizing mobile broadband, OnGo is a technology that puts the power of wireless networks into the hands of those that rely on them to empower and expand business opportunities. OnGo presents nearly limitless options for enhanced customizability and allows users to tailor networks to a specific set of needs, such as Private LTE, neutral host and Industrial IoT applications, while providing investment protection as the first mid-band solution for 5G. OnGo Certified is a recognized seal of approval that indicates a product's ability to meet a high set of quality, interoperability and security standards when tested by an independent, OnGo-Authorized test laboratory. Both the OnGo brand and the OnGo Certification Program are managed and maintained by the OnGo Alliance.

The OnGo Alliance believes that 4G and 5G solutions, utilizing shared spectrum, can enable both in-building and outdoor coverage and capacity expansion at massive scale. In order to maximize the full potential of shared spectrum, the OnGo Alliance aims to enable a robust ecosystem towards making OnGo solutions available. The mission of the OnGo Alliance is to evangelize 4G and 5G OnGo technology, use cases and business opportunities while simultaneously driving technology developments necessary to fulfill the mission, including multi-operator capabilities. The Alliance also established an effective product certification program for OnGo equipment in the U.S. 3.5 GHz band ensuring multi-vendor interoperability.

“The Alliance is very proud of our members’ amazing work over the last five years to realize the vision for LTE and 5G commercial services in the CBRS band,” concludes Dave Wright, President of the OnGo Alliance. “While our focus will continue to be on advancing OnGo adoption and deployments in the 3.5 GHz CBRS band, our new, expanded mission provides the latitude for us to apply our specifications, work products, and learnings in other frequencies and countries.”

For more information, visit www.ongoalliance.org.