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Federated Wireless has announced that its private wireless network running on the San Luis Obispo campus of California Polytechnic State University has expanded to support customers of nationwide wireless operator T-Mobile US.

The Cal Poly private wireless network was unveiled last November. It was a combination of Federated Wireless’ managed private network platform and edge products from Amazon Web Services (AWS). In this case, the Federated Wireless network was running on and connecting the AWS’ Snowcone edge compute hardware.

That platform now supports Federated Wireless’ Neutral Host 2.0 platform that it introduced earlier this month. The platform acts as a neutral host option on top of its managed private wireless service, which allows enterprise customers a managed way to integrate cellular operators into their private network deployments.

Carl Temme, SVP of product for the new Neutral Host 2.0 platform at Federated Wireless, explained at the time of its launch that the platform is targeted at enterprises and acts as a bridge between his company’s private wireless-as-a-service (PWaaS) product launched last year and operators looking to further integrate their 5G networks into the enterprise space. It uses shared infrastructure and shared Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum “to make it practical for those public carriers to provide service extension on top of our clients’ private wireless networks.

“We have a turnkey approach that gives [enterprises] the ability to have a private data network and do lots of interesting things with that,” Temme said. “And this layers the public subscriber capability on top of that. This is really not a single-purpose extension of public service, it’s a network that’s serving multiple purposes for our end clients, and then the public service providers can layer their service on top of that.”

Federated Wireless handles the logistics, deployment and management of the Neutral Host 2.0 service. This includes sourcing the necessary hardware, using its as-a-service software platform, managing the shareable CBRS spectrum and working with cellular operators to integrate their commercial offerings.

The Cal Poly network can now support T-Mobile customers, providing more robust and seamless coverage within areas around the campus. That support is currently limited to a 4G connection running on the CBRS spectrum, though Cal Poly is also using the Federated Wireless network to provide a 5G connection for its aptly named “5G innovation network.”

The agreement is a big move for T-Mobile as it has been a proponent of strictly licensed-backed wireless networks. The carrier last year launched its 5G Advanced Network Solutions product that includes different managed services that can tap into both licensed and unlicensed spectrums.

Mishka Dehghan, SVP for strategy, product and solutions engineering at T-Mobile for business, told SDxCentral that the carrier sees the most potential with that service using its licensed spectrum.

“I think the key differentiator is our network,” Dehghan said. “The reason why they come to us is because we do have that ubiquitous coverage everywhere on 5G. We know all the limitations that exist on CBRS, it doesn’t scale up and things of that nature, but if somebody already has CBRS that they’re using and they just want to augment it with our connectivity solutions, because we do see some demand for hybrid connectivity, we accommodate those, too. But really the premise of this is they’re coming to us — they want our connectivity. There’s a reason why they come to T-Mobile, why don’t we make it easier for them to get the end-to-end solution?”

Federated Wireless acts as one of only a handful of CBRS spectrum access system providers – alongside Google, Amdocs and Sony – that are tasked by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with managing access to that spectrum.

Federated Wireless was one of the first to market with a platform allowing for management of that spectrum band’s complex licensing model, which is built around maintaining interference protection for incumbent and priority access users.

The CBRS spectrum is a swath of around 150 megahertz in the 3.5 GHz band that the federal government has set aside for licensed use. An organization can gain access to some of those bands for a limited geographic area using a licensing process managed by a couple of different programs.

Temme explained that Federated Wireless is currently the conduit for 48% of the CBRS spectrum used in the market, with that spectrum being used by more than 500 customers connecting more than 150,000 devices.

That advantage could be huge if the private network market continues to build toward expectations.

Analysys Mason predicts the private 5G market will grow at a 65% compound annual growth rate between 2021 and 2027, hitting 39,000 deployments at the end of that timeframe. That growth will be on the back of investments it predicts will grow from $1.5 billion in 2022 to $7.7 billion by 2027.