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Motorola Solutions entered the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) market with a new product line, dubbed MOTOTRBO Nitro, which will interoperate with its MOTOTRBO two-way radio networks. The company announced the new line at its Channel Partner Expo March 18 and expects channel partners to be the main selling points for the new offering.
In October, the FCC adopted a report and order that modifies the rules governing the CBRS 3.5 GHz band, allowing county-level licenses. The commission created a three-tiered framework of users consisting of incumbents, priority access licenses (PALs) and general authorized access (GAA) users.
Critical infrastructure industries (CII) entities and other commercial operations are expected to use PALs for campus and other small-area broadband networks. The new offering from Motorola Solutions includes a suite of secure solutions featuring push-to-talk (PTT), video feeds, workflow applications, as well as the SLN 1000, a device that the company called the first purpose-built radio to work on a CBRS network.
Customers will buy the end-user devices. The CBRS indoor and outdoor access points; infrastructure, including a shared Long Term Evolution (LTE) core; and applications will be a monthly subscription-based managed services offering from Motorola.
The Nitro devices will be the same MOTOTRBO form factor as the company’s LMR MOTOTRBO devices. Other CBRS-certified band 48 devices under FCC Part 96 could also work on the Nitro network.
John Zidar, Motorola corporate vice president for commercial markets, said the product line could replace Wi-Fi or cellular communications on a corporate campus and interoperate with MOTOTRBO networks already in use. Users will have better indoor coverage across their entire organization, enabled by broadband data at twice the capacity and up to four times the range of Wi-Fi through a customized private network that delivers both voice and broadband data, a company statement said.
Zidar said several customer trials are underway. Motorola last week purchased Avtec for its dispatch technology, which can be integrated into MOTOTRBO installations.
“Commercial operations such as hotels, universities and warehouses rely on instant voice communications as the backbone of their workforce, and they need their broadband data to be just as dependable,” said Zidar.
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