A new approach to enabling abundant wireless connectivity

The ability to connect with people and services—whether that’s sending a message or streaming a video—has become part of our daily lives. Yet, far too often, we encounter situations where the connection is just too slow to use—or we have no connectivity at all.

In the U.S., while mobile Internet access is widely available, download speeds are among the slowest in the developed world. Why? You can think of wireless networks like a highway, and they’re getting congested as demand continues to grow, leading to slowdowns. So if we increase available wireless spectrum, it’s like adding lanes on a highway to carry additional traffic.

Together with a multitude of industries including mobile, cable, IoT and more, we’ve worked closely with the U.S. government to foster policies for a new shared spectrum approach to wireless connectivity. The Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) is a successful example of this approach. CBRS allows a wide array of business models to use shared spectrum—from mobile carriers to rural broadband providers to venue owners—without having to spend significant resources to acquire usage rights. A cloud-based Spectrum Access System (SAS) intelligently manages sharing between new and incumbent users. By sharing underutilized portions of spectrum, CBRS adds capacity, lowers barriers to commercial entry and paves a path to 5G.

Unlike today’s wireless networks, CBRS will consist of densely packed radios from multiple providers all sharing the same spectrum, and sometimes even the same network. This completely changes the way you plan, deploy and operate your network. We are bringing the best of Google, such as our geo-spatial insight, network infrastructure and computational capabilities to deliver a suite of products to enable CBRS networks, starting with Google’s SAS.

It is genuinely exciting to see the wireless ecosystem embrace CBRS and ultimately enhance wireless Internet for everyone. We’ve been at this for a long time, going back to a Presidential study that proposed the framework behind CBRS. Now, CBRS is rapidly approaching commercial availability with first deployments expected this year.