OnGo Alliance, the industry consortium that promotes the development, commercialization and adoption of LTE and 5G solutions for the U.S. 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), announced the winners for the OnGo Alliance 2022 Awards. The awards recognize innovations in real-world CBRS solutions and their business impact.

The OnGo Annual Awards recognize companies that have demonstrated exceptional leadership, innovation, and success in deploying CBRS to enable new wireless services and applications, drive operational efficiencies and improve user experiences.

"We are thrilled to honor this year's OnGo Alliance Annual Award winners for their exceptional deployments of OnGo technology and for leading the way in unlocking the full potential of shared spectrum for private wireless," said Alan Ewing, executive director of OnGo Alliance.

The winners include:

• Excellence in a WISP OnGo Deployment: Awarded to Ericsson (with Ohio TT, Winncom) for expanding broadband to the rural communities of Ohio by providing affordable broadband to more than 20,000 households and small businesses. The solution overcomes many traditional line-of-sight and signal propagation issues, making it possible to deliver broadband service in areas that previously had no other viable connectivity options. Moreover, the new radio technology could be installed on existing water towers, minimizing the need for building new towers.
• Excellence in an Enterprise OnGo Private Network Deployment: Awarded to Baicells Technologies (with Alef Edge, CELLocity, Druid, LittleBird, Winncom) for its deployment in a multi-dwelling unit (MDU) community, providing high-speed broadband access to apartment buildings where laying fiber or coax was not part of the original design plan and was prohibitively expensive. The private wireless network enables MDU service providers to offer smart amenities to residents and enhance safety with IoT applications like door entry access control and interactive video intercoms.
• Excellence in OnGo Technology Innovation: Awarded to JMA (with Boingo, Cisco, Dell, DISH, Google, Hughes, Intel) for providing ORAN and OnGo-compliant 5G virtual RAN and radios using CBRS spectrum on the n48 band to the U.S. Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. With the upgraded private 5G network, Whidbey will better support base operations and maintenance and enhance mission-critical naval functions. The solution showcases a first-of-its-kind operational private 5G network leveraging 5G Standalone core, open standards set by ORAN, and CBRS spectrum with both GAA and PAL licenses.
• OnGo in State, Local, and Education: Awarded to Federated Wireless (with AWS) for the CBRS private network solution at California Polytechnic State University that increased coverage and capacity for students and staff, modernized campus facilities management, and provided low latency connectivity for data-intensive research applications in the University's indoor and outdoor innovation lab, driving adoption of 5G features such as the IoT, digital twins and autonomous farming.
• OnGo Neutral Host Architecture/Solution: Awarded to CTS (with Airspan, Druid) for deploying a CBRS network at a medical office building looking for a cost-effective replacement for its existing DAS network. In-building cellular coverage is a significant problem that impacts patient and guest satisfaction scores. The OnGo Neutral Host Network provides a solution that improves the patient experience and expands in-building coverage cost-effectively.
• Judge's Choice: Awarded to Bearcom (with Athonet, Airspan and BEC) for using OnGo technology in an innovative and exciting way. Bearcom designed and deployed a mobile CBRS private LTE Cell site on Wheels for a large music festival that, at the organizer's request, could be put up the week before the event and taken down the week after the music ended. The deployed LTE network provided high speed connectivity to over 2,000 devices for ticket scanning, POS, artist connectivity and more.

"Over the past few years, the OnGo award entries have changed, from technology innovations to business model innovation and practical changes to make OnGo deployments work easily in the field. It's exciting to see such a variety of deployments in industrial, educational, healthcare and public venue cases, with a business chain where everybody can make a profit," said Joe Madden of Mobile Experts, lead judge for the award submissions.

The OnGo Alliance Annual Awards program is open to all members of the OnGo Alliance, and winners are selected by a panel of judges consisting of industry experts. The OnGo Alliance board and its members are uninvolved in the judging process. The panel of judges this year was led by Joe Madden, founder and chief analyst at Mobile Experts. He was joined by Ashish Jain, CEO and chief editor, PrivateLTEand5G; Iain Gillott, founder and president at iGR;  Monica Paolini, principal at Senza Fili; and Peter Murray, executive director at Dense Networks.