96.3% of CBRS Radios Rely on Free Spectrum Tier, Analysis Finds

By Elena Vasquez

As of July 2026, 96.3 percent of radios operating in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) were using the band's free general authorized access (GAA) tier, according to a new analysis of data from one of the band's spectrum access system coordinators. The figure marks a slight increase over a government survey conducted in July 2024, and it comes from research published by New America, the Washington-based think tank.

The number tells a simple story about how a shared band actually gets used. CBRS, the 3.5 GHz mid-band spectrum opened for commercial sharing in the United States, was built on a three-tier model. Incumbent users such as naval radar sit at the top. Priority Access License (PAL) holders, who paid at auction for protected rights in parts of the band, come next. Everyone else operates under GAA — no license fee, no guarantee of interference protection, simply permission to transmit where capacity allows.

What does the GAA share say about the band?

The finding that more than 96 radios in every 100 rely on the free tier suggests the paid layer remains a niche product relative to the overall radio population. GAA users include a broad mix: fixed wireless access providers, private enterprise networks, utilities and municipal deployments. For many of them, the unprotected free tier has been sufficient to build working services.

That dependence cuts both ways. On one hand, it demonstrates that the sharing framework the Federal Communications Commission designed for CBRS has lowered the barrier to entry for spectrum access. Operators that could never afford auction-priced licenses have deployed real networks. On the other hand, it raises a structural question about the band's economics: if nearly all usage settles into the free tier, the commercial value of Priority Access licenses becomes harder to argue, at least as measured by radio counts rather than revenue or traffic volume.

The comparison matters because radio counts and business value are not the same thing. A small number of PAL holders carrying heavy traffic on protected channels could generate substantial commercial activity while remaining a rounding error in a percentage of deployed radios. The New America analysis, drawn from coordinator data, measures presence in the band — how many radios are registered to each tier — not the throughput or financial performance behind them.

How has the picture changed since 2024?

The shift itself is modest. A government survey two years earlier, in July 2024, found the GAA share slightly lower, and the trend since then has moved toward, not away from, the free tier. For a band once promoted as a test case for market-based spectrum sharing, the direction of travel suggests users continue to treat GAA as the band's working tier rather than a stepping stone toward paid licenses.

The finding lands at a moment when regulators and standards bodies are watching CBRS closely as a template. Shared-access models are under discussion in other bands and other markets, and evidence about which tier users actually choose feeds directly into those policy debates. A band where free access dominates presents a different design problem than one where paid licenses carry the load.

New America's analysis, based on July 2026 data from one of the CBRS coordinators, offers the most recent snapshot of that balance. Whether the GAA share holds, rises or erodes as PAL renewals and new deployments play out will say a great deal about the future of spectrum sharing in the United States.