Cable company Charter Communications appears to be in the early stages of charting out the contours of a mobile network in cities across the country, including Dallas, New York and Orlando.
Charter spent roughly $500 million on 3.5GHz CBRS spectrum licenses in an FCC auction last year, and last month the company asked for FCC approval to test transmissions in the band in roughly a dozen different cities where it won licenses.
"As a recent CBRS Auction 105 winning bidder, in approaching its RF network design Charter requires propagation data detailing the characteristics of CBRS signal propagation in varied topology and clutter environments," the company wrote in its FCC application. "As is standard industry practice, Charter intends to collect such data through Continuous Wave (CW) drive testing in varied locations characteristic of potential future deployment areas. In doing so, a calibrated non-modulated transmitter emits a precise signal, both in frequency and transmit power, while a measurement team 'drive tests,' collecting received power level data at dispersed geographic points throughout the covered area of the transmitter using a similarly specialized calibrated recording receiver."