The FCC is still mulling potential rule changes to the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) 3.5 GHz band for the U.S., but that’s not stopping folks at Federated Wireless from rolling out a new program designed to speed OEM’s time to market.
Federated this week unveiled its Partner Program, which is designed to allow OEMs of all sizes to automate critical functions during integration with the Federated Wireless Spectrum Controller, including onboarding, testing and support. Federated Wireless said it’s the only organization offering OEMs this level of support.
According to Federated Wireless CEO Iyad Tarazi, both the company and the industry at large have seen significant growth over the last 18 months. Federated has worked with dozens of traditional and non-traditional wireless OEMs to conduct and complete trials of various use cases, and what they discovered is they needed some kind of formal, cohesive program to keep it all together and foster ongoing achievements.
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“One of the things we learned when you have an ecosystem of this magnitude, you can’t do things the old way,” he told FierceWirelessTech.
Carriers traditionally have had one or two suppliers per market, but in at least one of Federated Wireless’ trials, the operator wanted to try nine or 10 different vendors. Given the volume, some kind of qualification process is required so that the best ones rise to the top, so to speak, to make sure they’re well integrated with the SAS, can keep up with the software releases and are providing the reliability that’s required.
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The company said the Federated Wireless Partner Program has been established with the understanding that the full ecosystem benefits from shared information on real-world deployments. OEMs partnering with Federated Wireless gain access to training modules, a user guide, Federated Wireless Spectrum Controller product documentation, release notes, a feature guide and API documentation.
Companies that are endorsing the partner program include Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung Electronics America, Sercomm, Juni Korea Co. and Ruckus Wireless, an Arris company.
While Tarazi is a veteran wireless engineer who has been a CBRS evangelist since the beginning, he also boasts a team leading the new Partner Program that is led by the company’s VP of Solutions Development and Operations, Emer Marchetti, who has more than 20 years of experience in senior network design and development roles at Sprint, Nextel and Alcatel Data Networks, among others.
You can bet that Federated Wireless will be ready to share its momentum during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month; the company is planning demos there so anyone interested can see it for themselves.