Vertical: Education
Application: Neutral Host Network
Ecosystem: InfiniG
Private Network: CBRS, LTE
For years, Arizona State University’s main administration hub – the 150,000 square foot University Services Building (USB) – suffered from abysmal cellular coverage. Despite its location near booming Phoenix, the building was essentially a giant mobile “dead zone.” Students, staff, and visitors struggled to make calls or use data, leading to frustration and complaints.
Mobile carriers weren’t motivated to prioritize USB for infrastructure upgrades since it’s a relatively small facility with subscribers split across different networks. A traditional multi-carrier Distributed Antenna System (DAS) wasn’t economically feasible.
That all changed in 2023 when ASU partnered with InfiniG and Cox Private Networks to deploy a Neutral Host-as-a-Service (NHaaS) solution running on the CBRS 3.5 GHz band.
The Neutral Host approach uses an array of small but powerful radios to create a unified indoor cellular grid for mobile operators to share. It connects subscriber devices to their chosen carrier network just like outdoors using secure links.
The impact was immediate and dramatic:
- 5 bars of rock-solid coverage for AT&T and T-Mobile subscribers
- Other carriers access via roaming
- 5x faster speeds than previous solutions
- 20x more overall capacity
- E911 service finally enabled indoors
By embracing the cloud-based Neutral Host model over CBRS, ASU has cost-effectively solved the building’s connectivity woes, enabling reliable voice/data and setting the stage for the expansion of mobility, IoT, and private networks campus-wide.
