The CBRS Alliance and the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) are going to be working together to advance the use of CBRS spectrum. They have signed an agreement under which the organizations will work together to address technical challenges and business opportunities for OnGo technology.
The collaboration will focus on the technical interworking between the CBRS Alliance and ATIS solutions, including the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI), Home Network Identity (HNI), Priority Services, and Radio Access Networks. The work will also address legal and regulatory compliance topics.
As part of the liaison agreement, the organizations will partner on HNI initiatives within the 3.5 GHz CBRS band. Traditionally, an HNI identifies a mobile subscriber’s home network and is assignable to mobile network operators with international roaming capabilities. Since the 3550 to 3700 MHz spectrum is not solely for exclusive use, some users will not directly attain FCC spectrum licenses. Instead, users acquire base stations certified by the FCC as being compliant with the FCC rules. With such broad and low-cost access to the shared licensed spectrum, ATIS’ IMSI Oversight Council (IOC) derived a strategy for allocating blocks of IMSIs for users within the 3.5 GHz CBRS band. Within the 3.5 GHz band, a Shared HNI is used to identify CBRS operations, thus conserving HNI resources.
On November 6, the CBRS Alliance Technical Working Group and ATIS hosted an educational webinar offering an overview of Shared HNI on CBRS and its benefits for the overall industry. The session included an explanation of HNIs, their purpose, the benefits of a Shared HNI compared to a non-shared HNI, and best practices to set up network identifiers in a Shared HNI environment. For additional information on HNI allocation, click here.
