We are obsessed with two things at Federated Wireless. Delivering the best customer experience in the industry and relentlessly improving our cloud-native platform to provide the most resilient and high availability shared spectrum solution possible.
Fortunately for us, happy customers and cloud-based services with nearly zero downtime go hand-in-hand, which is why we continue to invest in delivering greater availability for CBRS spectrum.
Our latest Spectrum Controller release takes that story even further by enabling geo-redundant multi-region architecture for our SAS protocol services to ensure service continuity, the component of our Spectrum Access System (SAS) that monitors authorization and keeps our customers operational on CBRS spectrum.
What is geo-redundancy and why is it important for CBRS spectrum?
Geographic redundancy protects cloud services and applications from downtime and disruption by replicating services across multiple regions. Backing up services in multiple locations means that if a cloud provider experiences a disruptive event in one region or datacenter it is significantly less likely to cause a negative impact to the cloud-based service.
This is a major milestone for the cloud maturity of our Spectrum Controller platform. But you might ask, how does geo-redundant multi-region architecture translate to value for CBRS SAS and Private Wireless customers?
It means that our customers get the maximum benefits of the cloud with sophisticated architectural features and techniques in place to mitigate any potential risks of operating 100% in the cloud.
These are the benefits of high availability for CBRS SAS and Private Wireless:
- Save IT resources with nearly zero downtime (less than six minutes of downtime per year)
- Protect revenue streams with always-on connectivity
- Preserve business continuity for mission-critical applications or services
- Safeguard the brand and customer expectations for downstream end-user services that run on wireless connectivity
Multi-region architecture is only part of the story. In fact, it’s the latest in years of investment into our platforms and processes that are all aimed at maintaining and surpassing 99.999% availability.
What else goes into delivering a high availability CBRS SAS?
Achieving 99.999% availability in the cloud for CBRS spectrum actually comes down to three critical areas of our business that we have invested heavily in:
- Cloud platform reliability
- Customer experience
- Shared spectrum innovation
It’s this combination of attention to the customer experience and refining our technology that allows us to deliver the most reliable shared spectrum services possible.
Cloud Platform Reliability
Our Spectrum Controller implementation is built 100% in the AWS cloud and leverages architectural and cloud features to offer a highly redundant and resilient solution:
- Individual microservice level redundancy
- AWS Availability Zone level redundancy
- Multi-region support for service continuity
In the unlikely event of a failure in any component, the system automatically instantiates a new component in its place in real-time replacing the failed service. Due to the stateless manner in which the service is implemented, any transient connections to clients that are impacted due to the failure will automatically retry and will be served by the remaining system components.
To put it in simpler terms, we have built one of the most sophisticated cloud-native platforms in the industry, which is incredibly important to our customers as we extend to them the scale, security and cost optimizing benefits of operating CBRS spectrum in the cloud.
Customer Experience
In 2015, we made a bold move by building a 100% cloud-native platform to power the industry’s first CBRS Spectrum Access System (SAS).
Our customers are a testament to how the commitment to cloud has paid off. Today, more than 90,000 CBRS access points and 350+ customers are leveraging the Federated Wireless Spectrum Controller for CBRS SAS and Private Wireless services. Our cloud-native architecture also ensures that the shared spectrum model can scale with the growth of CBRS adoption, as well as new technologies like Automated Frequency Coordination (AFC) for Wi-Fi 6E in the 6 GHz band.
At the core of that success has been our obsessive attention and responsiveness to the needs of our customers. CBRS and shared spectrum are still new technologies. So as our customers invest and dedicate their business models to this new paradigm in connectivity, they need a partner that can respond in real-time.
We back our CBRS spectrum services with unparalleled customer support:
- 24/7/365 NOC Services
- Year-round, toll-free customer support (you can call us if you need us)
- Industry leading CBRS CPI training (Certified Professional Installer)
- Hands-on deployment engineer support for each customer onboarding experience
- MyFederated – On-demand support portal and best practice community
Shared Spectrum Innovation
In CBRS in particular, there is one more component of shared spectrum that makes all of this innovation possible for our customers. And that is our triple redundant Environmental Sensing Capability (ESC) network.
The ESC is a sensor network that can securely detect when naval radar needs access to a portion of the spectrum and safely move commercial users onto other channels, ensuring maximum spectral efficiency. This effectively makes sure naval radar is protected while making the maximum possible CBRS spectrum available for commercial users.
That’s important because the ability to protect incumbents is what makes CBRS shared spectrum cost-effective and available nationwide.
Not all CBRS SAS solutions are created equal. Having the nation’s largest and most complete, triple redundant ESC network is a huge differentiator for our customers, and a key reason why CBRS SAS users switch to Federated Wireless. We operate our network with the same standards and SLAs as a carrier-grade network operator, continuously monitoring, adjusting, and optimizing the network to deliver the highest performance.
For years now our network has successfully navigated extreme weather events in the most challenging environments, from hurricanes in the Gulf to wildfires in California. We have implemented triple redundant backhaul connections, extended battery backup, and when backup is exhausted, generators to handle extended power failures and ensure the network stays up and running.
We support our network with a 24/7/365 NOC to troubleshoot and solve problems as soon as they occur. These are all things that any carrier-grade network operator would do, and it’s what makes CBRS shared spectrum possible for network densification, fixed wireless services, and the fast-growing private wireless market.
What goes into delivering the most reliable CBRS Spectrum Access System possible with proven 99.999% availability?
The fact is that for wireless connectivity to work for your business it needs to essentially never be down. Our singular focus is building the most reliable shared spectrum solutions to power your business for a cloud and application-driven world. That means our teams are working year-round to make sure your wireless solutions stay connected, no matter what.
To summarize, you should make sure your CBRS SAS is backed up with:
- A mature cloud architecture including multi-region support for geographic redundancy
- 24/7/365 NOC Services with year-round, toll-free customer support
- The nation’s largest and most complete, triple redundant Environmental Sensing Capability (ESC)
We continue to invest in delivering, and improving on, our 99.999% availability because we understand that business continuity and disruption-free operations are critical for any business to succeed in today’s always-on, digital-intensive world.
