Google Cloud is winding down its spectrum access system (SAS) platform used to manage the quasi-licensed Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum, with plans to fully shutter the management platform next year.

“Starting June 10, 2026, we are no longer accepting new customers,” the cloud giant noted as part of a “retirement notice” on its support page. “The service will remain fully operational for existing customers during the transition period and will be shut down on June 10, 2027.”

The page includes “migration steps” for customers to transition their CBRS deployments to a different management vendor. Those other providers include Federated Wireless, Red Technologies, Nokia, Sony, and Keybridge.

Federated Wireless CEO Iyad Tarazi posted a welcome to those migrators on LinkedIn.

“At Federated Wireless, we’re ready to help,” Tarazi wrote. “We’ve successfully migrated 180,000-plus devices across enterprise, service provider, industrial, education, and government networks – helping customers transition with minimal disruption and continued service continuity. As the only SAS provider with a 100 percent nationwide sensor network covering all US coastal areas, including Alaska, Hawaii, and US territories, we’re committed to supporting the long-term success of the CBRS ecosystem. If you’re currently operating on Google’s SAS, now is the time to begin planning your transition strategy well ahead of the June 2027 deadline.”

What is a CBRS SAS?

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted rules in mid-2015 that set aside 150 megahertz of spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band to support new wireless use cases on a shared spectrum resource basis. The thought process was that the FCC wanted to open up access to under-utilized spectrum, much of which was in the hands of government agencies.

The challenge was that the proposed spectrum was in the hands of the Department of Defense (DoD) for use by Navy ship radars and in some registered fixed-satellite receiving stations. However, that usage was very sporadic both in terms of actual usage and geography, but vitally important when needed.

The answer was the use of a SAS to act as a clearinghouse managing spectrum usage. These were established as online platforms where organizations could reserve access to spectrum when needed and when available.

Access to that spectrum was set up through a multi-tiered access program that included tier-one incumbents with “protected status,” including the DoD for use by Navy ship radars and registered fixed-satellite receiving stations; a tier two for “priority access licenses” (PAL) that included entities that wanted to reserve geographically designed access to that spectrum; and tier three for “general authorized” channels.

The plan was eventually approved in early 2020, with access to that spectrum linked to SAS administrators that initially included firms like CommScope, Federated Wireless, Google, and Sony. Those firms were tasked with managing fair-use of the spectrum assets.

Has it worked? Well …

Deployments have so far been focused on private networks and by the use of some municipalities to power smart infrastructure, though some have also questioned the program’s success.

Wireless industry trade group CTIA commissioned a report by Recon Analytics in late 2022 that slammed the program for being inefficient and wasteful of precious mid-band spectrum resources.

“A review of today’s CBRS marketplace shows that CBRS does not live up to the hype as the foundation of innovation and should not be a model for future spectrum policy,” Roger Entner, founder and lead analyst at Recon Analytics, noted in an accompanying press release. “Real-world studies show low utilization, low market demand, and a dearth of innovative use cases.”

That insight comes from what the report notes was a “comprehensive review of the publicly available information about CBRS performance, use cases, and market dynamics following the commercialization of the band.”

CTIA’s position raised the hackles of CBRS proponents who countered claims of that model’s success. Companies and organizations, including Amazon, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Charter, Comcast, Federated Wireless, and Public Knowledge, filed a letter with FCC leaders touting the program’s success.

This included claims of more than 285,000 CBRS-capable base station devices having been deployed at that point, including 10,000 from cellular operators, and the FCC having approved 187 CBRS base stations and 496 end-user client devices. Federated Wireless’ Tarazi later told SDxCentral that the company managed around 45 percent of the more than 400,000 CBRS-enabled devices in the market.

Spectrum sharing initiatives have more recently been tied to the 6GHz band, where the FCC in 2020 approved opening up 1,200 megahertz of spectrum in that band to be available to WiFi for unlicensed use. However, that spectrum included incumbent users that limited the amount of spectrum devices could tap into, depending on shared usage requirements.

The FCC has since approved frequency coordination platforms that allow WiFi 6e and WiFi 7 devices to take advantage of both the deeper 6 GHz spectrum pool and the ability to beam those signals at further distances. This coverage and capacity boost is expected to be most relevant to outdoor WiFi deployments.