CBRS/LTE Project

Utah’s Private LTE/5G Use Cases

UETN stakeholders have identified the following use case categories and user stories for Private LTE/5G

Congestion - Quality of Service (QOS) Requirements, Overload on 2.4 and 5Ghz Wireless networks, etc.

The Silver Summit Academy in the South Summit school district has a lot of interference on their school WiFi network. The school is located in an industrial area with a factory right next door. They regularly have standard WiFi issues in and around the school. The school installed a Private LTE (PLTE) radio in the building and then purchased 150 ipads with CBRS compatibility and have been using them this school year. There have been no complaints about network issues at the school since the installation of the CBRS network. Students are using either Wifi and CBRS seamlessly. This school has one of the highest usage of PLTE/CBRS in the state.

Distance and Remote Learning - Cameras, AP, Parking Lots, Farms, Sports, Inside an Outside School

San Juan School District
in southeast Utah is providing school network access for teachers in Monument Valley, Utah in the teacher housing that is provided by the school district.


Sky View High School in Cache District

  • The football press box had been using an older bridge for the network. Speeds were slow and often the radio and TV streams had to use their own hotspots to stream the games. We installed the PLTE CBRS Cradlepoint in the press box that is across a large field from the main building and the school Athletic Director (AD) is very impressed with the improved speeds. They were able to stream local broadcasts as well as state level sports broadcasts. They are unaffected by the usage from the standard WiFi AP that is saturated with students in the stands. The school coaches and AD are also able to have a PLTE/CBRS MiFi and have about a 90 Mbps connection on the field. They look forward to using it for track.
  • Our school district’s driver education teachers are able to take a MiFi to the driving range that is outside of the main SkyView campus and for the first time have connectivity while instructing students.
  • Our teachers have been using both the Cradlepoint WiFi and the hotspots to be able to record mile run times from the field without having to go back to their offices to record them. They are also able to record attendance while on the field saving time and reducing incorrect entries that occur when doing it after the fact. Softball managers have been able to actively keep stats online and use their Game Changer software using hotspots. Sports teams have been able to upload their games to Hudl while the game is being filmed saving time that the coaches required to upload after the games.


Monticello Public Library
We had an adult patron who has gone back to college come into the library last night a little before closing. One of her classes has a textbook that isn’t available in print and she needed to be able to study for a test. Because she lives in the low income apartments next door where there is a PLTE CBRS signal for our library, we were able to check out a CBRS MiFi hotspot to her. It was so fantastic to be able to help someone who really needed it!


Tooele Public Library
Personal story from a patron - “I recently lost my job as an Uber driver during the covid-19 crisis and because of this I lost my rental and my vehicle. After all hope seemed lost, I was offered a job and immediately thought my problems would be over. As it turned out, they were solely working from home themselves because of this virus and were expecting me to be able to do the same. In pure desperation, I reached out to the city library asking if there was anyway I could be granted access to go inside, even though they too were closed to the public, to use the WiFi and keep my new job.’

Thankfully, although I could not enter the building, they told me their WiFi had improved and I should be able to use it sitting outside and for this I will be forever grateful. I parked my car outside, set up a chair in the shade and pulled out my computer. Because of their generosity and the extension to their WiFi, I am able to not only keep my job, but also enjoy the beauty outside of the building. To those responsible for giving this library the improvement to their service and in turn my ability to work through this crisis, I cannot say thank you enough.” Email received from Tooele Community Member

High Security - Point of Sale,
Telehealth, IOT, etc.

Utah Telehealth Network and the Regional Centers in the state - Delivered Telehealth Kits to several of the rural districts and schools. The kits are provided so school nurses can measure vitals in real time while working at a district office or with a remotely located doctor. The kits have a Samsung Android Tablet that they connect with bluetooth to all the medical devices for measuring patient vitals. With these medical measurements being highly private, putting these on a more secure CBRS network dropping off to a specific media gateway limits the scope of a HIPAA audit. Future purchases of these tablets, we could purchase 5G Samsung Tablets and connect them to our CBRS Network.

Roaming - Voice, District Warehouses, AR/VR, Vehicles, Buses, etc.

Jim Stewart, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at UETN - I used the PLTE network at Oscarson Elementary School to connect and teach a topic in the national Certified Educational Technology Leadership (CETL) class, I had full access to the network based on my UETN Access Point Name (APN) that is tied to the SIM in my iPad. I was able to roam from my UETN office to this very rural and remote community of Marysville, Utah and still had full and high-speed network access to teach the class from the school's parking lot. The connection worked perfectly.

Engineering and
Research

UofU Seismograph Program
Is working with UETN to provide connectivity using Private LTE and CBRS for some of the hard to reach seismic devices. Our first site to pilot is in the small, rural, and remote town of LaSal Utah, in San Juan County. Also, there are several other sites in the state that need to use this technology to ensure a highly reliable and robust connection for the needed devices.

High Velocity - Site Vehicles,
Buses, Elevators, etc.

Experience of PLTE/CBRS experts in the state - While driving along Interstate 80 through Tooele county, Utah, returning from a PLTE/CBRS experiment on the Salt Flats, we saw we had a signal from Tooele high school. We later found out it was about 13 miles away which is our current best distance for CBRS. Interstate 80, through that section, is 80 mph which is the speed we were driving. The co-pilot (not the driver) was able to do a speed test and have a good connection at that distance and at that speed.

ATSC 3.0
Next Gen TV
Low Latency - 5G/Edge
Computing