A winning bidder in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, Mercury Broadband, is doing its part to close the digital divide through the deployment of rural broadband networks. As part of its expansion, the rural provider of high-speed internet has purchased and deployed hundreds of Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) fixed wireless access radios, equipment and software from Airspan.
Mercury Broadband plans to use Airspan’s 5G CBRS solutions to expand its service offerings through FWA, which includes offering new services for businesses, as well as providing smart home experiences such as an advanced managed WiFi solution.
Airspan is providing its AirSpeed 1030 radios for use across Mercury Broadband’s network within its first phase of network expansion in Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, and Michigan. Mercury Broadband also plans to utilize AirSpeed 1030 radios in markets slated for later this year across Ohio and Illinois. Mercury projects the impact of the AirSpeed 1030s to also increase the company’s service level agreements to their subscribers by several orders of magnitude.
“Airspan’s expertise in innovative CBRS solutions allows us to offer our customers reliable and expanding rural broadband connectivity,” said Garrett Wiseman, CEO, Mercury Broadband. “With CBRS, we can extend our wireless network to more hard-to-reach areas.”
In March, Samsung Electronics America, Inc. and t3 Broadband today announced it would be delivering 5G-ready CBRS network solutions to Mercury Broadband. Through the agreement, t3 Broadband will provide Samsung’s latest CBRS solutions, including its 64T64R Massive MIMO radios and CDU50 baseband units. The devices will be implemented at more than 500 FWA sites across Mercury Broadband’s network in Kansas, Missouri and Indiana, before expanding to additional states through 2025.
During trials of several active CBRS sites across Mercury Broadband’s footprint in 2H 2021, Samsung’s CBRS solutions increased in speeds by 119 percent on average across a site, compared to past implementations, as well as increasing spectral efficiency through use of Samsung’s Massive MIMOs. OpEx and CapEx costs were reduced through optimization of the number of towers from 2,500 to 1,000.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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