The private 5G space is red hot, but an important basis for that growth and future potential is being questioned ahead of government action on spectrum policy that could be vital to the market’s long-term success.

The action in question is the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) current look into whether spectrum in the 3.1-3.45 GHz band that is currently used by the Department of Defense can be freed up for shared access by commercial entities. The sharing model being investigated is similar to one that is currently being used for the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum band.

CBRS spectrum is a swath of around 150 megahertz in the 3.5 GHz band that the federal government has set aside for licensed use. Access to that spectrum is through a multi-tiered access program that includes tier-one incumbents with “protected status,” including the Department of Defense for use by Navy ship radars and registered fixed satellite receiving stations; a tier two for “priority access licenses” (PAL); and tier three for “general authorized” (GAA) channels.

Access to that spectrum is through a group of Spectrum Access System (SAS) administrators comprised of CommScope, Federated Wireless, Google, and Sony.

The FCC began working on this specific shared model a decade ago and adopted the current rules in 2015. Actual usage of the spectrum did not begin until just a few years ago, but it has since become central to many private 5G business plans.

Private 5G spectrum sharing a bust?

Depending on who you ask, this process has either been wildly successful or a complete bust. (There is no other option, so don’t ask.)

The complete bust view is highlighted by a recent report put out by the cellular industry trade group CTIA. For perspective, this organization has been around for decades and is tightly knit into the cellular carrier industry.

The CTIA report, which was conducted by Recon Analytics, slams the current CBRS spectrum sharing arrangement as being inefficient and wasteful of precious mid-band spectrum resources.

“A review of today’s CBRS marketplace shows that CBRS does not live up to the hype as the foundation of innovation and should not be a model for future spectrum policy,” Roger Entner, Founder and Lead Analyst at Recon Analytics, noted in an accompanying press release. “Real-world studies show low utilization, low market demand, and a dearth of innovative use cases.”

That insight comes from what the report notes was a “comprehensive review of the publicly available information about CBRS performance, use cases, and market dynamics following the commercialization of the band.”

Due to this dearth of innovation, Entner concludes that “policymakers should refrain from using CBRS sharing as a model for bands in the future.”

But what does CTIA suggest instead? I am glad you asked. They want the FCC to continue with auctioning spectrum under a licensed model that assigns specific bands to specific entities.

This model has been lucrative for the federal government as operators have forked over hundreds of billions of dollars over the years to gain control over spectrum and turned those assets into the pipes for their 5G deployments.

My guess is that CTIA and its constituents would actually prefer the FCC to just give the spectrum away to operators as it foolishly did in the mids-80s (lotteries!), but that free ride has sailed.

Spectrum sharing support claims

CTIA’s position raised the hackles of CBRS proponents who countered claims of that model’s success. Companies and organizations, including Amazon, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Charter, Comcast, Federated Wireless, and Public Knowledge, filed a letter with FCC leaders touting the program’s success.

This includes claims of more than 285,000 CBRS-capable base station devices having been deployed, including 10,000 from cellular operators, and the FCC having approved 187 CBRS base stations and 496 end-user client devices.

“Those data points are really the ones we look at,” Federated Wireless CTO Kurt Schaubach told me in an interview. “The band wasn't created to be a band where every square inch of the U.S. gets deployed with CBRS. That's not the point of creating innovation.”

Jan Hofmeyr, VP for Amazon Web Services’ EC2 platform, expressed similar support during an interview at this week’s re:Invent show.

“There's lots of concerns about the shared spectrum availability, and so far we haven't run into any issues,” Hofmeyr said. “A lot of people are skeptical. They feed on the skepticism. People are using it, and it’s pretty good.”

So where does this leave the private 5G space?

My view is that it’s probably still too early to make a definitive call on the success or failure of these initiatives. I have spoken with dozens of large vendors and service providers over the past several months on their private 5G plans, and all have expressed considerable support for the current CBRS spectrum sharing plan.

However, talk is just talk, and real commercial success stories need to be highlighted. CBRS proponents need to get customers to talk more about the success and innovation they are gleaning from this spectrum and provide details on how well the spectrum sharing model is working.

I think it’s obvious where both sides are coming from in this discussion, and I totally understand both the CBRS/spectrum sharing side in wanting to gain access to even more spectrum, and from the licensed-spectrum side that wants to get their hands on more spectrum to power their 5G network plans. The fact is that wireless spectrum is a finite resource and increasingly important to power internet access moving forward.

The FCC’s current 3.1-3.45 GHz proceedings are caught in the middle. It’s probably a good idea not to just sit on this spectrum or to wait for more data on the sharing model if it can be put to use more quickly for the public good. But that is going to require those private 5G spectrum sharing proponents to more forcefully get their points across.

The clock is ticking.