ARLINGTON, Va. and SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. – Federated Wireless, Inc., a shared spectrum and private wireless leader, and California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly), today announced the expansion of Cal Poly's private wireless network along with a new neutral host capability enabling the private wireless network to support T-Mobile customers.

Cal Poly's converged 4G and 5G private wireless technology operating in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band, combined with the neutral host capability and T-Mobile service will not only improve connectivity and safety for the campus community, but also unlock new opportunities for academic innovation with global impact in critical industries such as construction, agriculture, and energy.

The first deployments of this CBRS neutral host solution at Cal Poly will be outdoors in remote hiking areas as well as inside the new William and Linda Frost Center for Research and Innovation. Much like three colleges – the College of Science and Mathematics, the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences, and the College of Liberal Arts – coming together in the Frost Center to collaborate in a shared space, the revolutionary private wireless network is a convergence of technologies working together to support cutting-edge wireless capabilities and research projects.

The solution is implemented with Federated Wireless' Neutral Host 2.0™, which uses a communication hub that leverages AWS Snowball Edge and AWS Snowcone services to support a multi-use private wireless network. The multi-use network simultaneously supports private connectivity services provided by the university and connectivity for T-Mobile subscribers. The public-private converged network enables a wide range of advanced wireless use cases, including:

Unlike legacy neutral host technologies such as Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) that require differing configurations for each Mobile Network Operator (MNO), Federated Wireless Neutral Host 2.0™ uses an open, shared solution approach. It offers a private wireless network built using components from an open ecosystem of software and equipment providers to take advantage of CBRS shared spectrum and achieve a radio network that can be shared by multiple public MNOs.

The resulting solution provides a cost-effective, multi-purpose, 4G and 5G network with neutral host capability, offering institutions and enterprises a scalable blueprint for addressing multiple complex business challenges with one integrated public-private network.

The new interoperability and private 5G capabilities will be commemorated with a ribbon-cutting of the Cal Poly 5G Innovation Lab on May 25, 2023, at the Justin and J. Lohr Center for Wine and Viticulture at Cal Poly.

Read the full press release here.

Federated Wireless