Analysis of CBSD Deployment Trends

These three charts illustrate the growth and configuration of Citizen Broadband Radio Service Devices (CBSDs) from 2022 to mid-2025, focusing on daily counts across operating categories, deployment environments (outdoor vs. indoor), and height categories (above vs. below 6 meters above ground level, or AGL). The data shows a clear overall expansion in CBSD deployments, with total volumes scaling from low six figures in 2022 to over 500,000 by mid-2025.

1. Daily Count of CBSDs by Operating Category

• Category-Specific Trends:
  • Category A (lower-power, indoor-focused devices) starts lower in 2022 (~50,000–100,000) but grows steadily, plateauing slightly in 2024–2025.
  • Category B (higher-power, outdoor-capable devices) begins at similar levels but surges more aggressively from 2023 onward, dominating the later periods.
• Pie Chart Insight: The right-side donut chart (as of mid-2025) shows Category B comprising the majority (~70–80% based on visual slice sizes), suggesting a shift toward higher-power configurations for broader coverage needs.
• Key Trend: Increasing reliance on Category B for scalability, potentially driven by enterprise or rural deployment demands.

2. Deployed Outdoor vs. Indoor

• Environment-Specific Trends:
  • Outdoor (blue) deployments lead from the start, rising sharply from 2023 (~200,000) to dominate at ~350,000–400,000 by 2025.
  • Indoor (green) grows more modestly, starting at ~50,000 in 2022 and reaching ~100,000–150,000 by mid-2025, with a noticeable plateau in 2024.
• Pie Chart Insight: The donut chart highlights outdoor as ~75–80% of total deployments in 2025, underscoring a preference for external use cases like fixed wireless access.
• Key Trend: Outdoor deployments outpace indoor by a 3:1 ratio in recent years, likely reflecting CBRS's strengths in non-line-of-sight urban/rural coverage over traditional indoor Wi-Fi alternatives.

3. Deployed Above or Below 6m AGL

• Height-Specific Trends:
  • Below 6m (green, e.g., ground-level or low-mount) grows linearly from ~50,000 in 2022 to ~200,000–250,000 by 2025, forming a stable base.
  • Above 6m (blue, e.g., pole/rooftop mounts) accelerates faster post-2023, reaching ~250,000–300,000, overtaking below-6m in volume by 2024.
• Pie Chart Insight: The 2025 donut shows above 6m at ~55–60%, indicating a tilt toward elevated installations for improved propagation.
• Key Trend: Shift from low-height (below 6m) dominance in early years to elevated (above 6m) prevalence, enabling better signal reach in dense or expansive environments.

Cross-Chart Configuration Insights

• Interconnections: Outdoor deployments (middle chart) strongly correlate with Category B (top chart) and above-6m heights (bottom chart), as higher-power, elevated outdoor setups are ideal for CBRS's interference-avoidance model via Spectrum Access System (SAS) coordination. Indoor/low-height configs align more with Category A, suiting controlled environments like offices.
• Temporal Shifts: Growth is modest in 2022–2023 (establishment phase), explosive in 2024 (adoption surge), and stabilizing in early 2025 (maturation). This suggests CBRS ecosystem maturity, with ~80% of new deployments favoring "outdoor/high" configs for optimal performance.
• Implications: Trends point to CBSDs evolving from indoor/low-power pilots to outdoor/high-power production-scale use, supporting 5G private networks and IoT. Potential drivers include regulatory easing, hardware cost reductions, and demand for unlicensed mid-band spectrum. If volumes continue, totals could exceed 1 million by end-2025, with outdoor/above-6m configs comprising 70%+.