An interview with Cornelius Honour, Assistant Vice President for IT Infrastructure and Operations at DFW Airport, on implementing CBRS private wireless across a campus the size of Manhattan
Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) is transforming how major facilities manage connectivity, particularly in sprawling environments where traditional infrastructure faces physical and financial challenges. In this exclusive interview, Cornelius Honour shares insights on DFW Airport’s implementation of private wireless technology, its use cases, challenges, and cost savings.
The Need for Alternative Connectivity
Q: What challenges led DFW Airport to explore private wireless solutions?
“As with most people in the infrastructure space, you’re always looking for cost savings on fiber connectivity. This is especially challenging in the DFW airport space as our campus is the size of Manhattan and a little over 27 square miles,” Honour explained.
The airport’s extensive fiber network comes at a significant cost, particularly when connecting remote locations. “With traditional fiber, to do the backhaul for one or two endpoints, we would be well into the six figures just due to the distance from the closest meet-me point.”
This reality prompted the exploration of alternative technologies, including long-distance Wi-Fi solutions, before discovering private wireless as a potential game-changer for specific use cases across the airport campus.
Early Implementation and Practical Applications
Q: How did DFW Airport begin testing private wireless technology?
The airport started with targeted pilots focusing on practical applications. “We actually started out doing these at the terminals. We did them on two of our boarding gates and learned that we had much lower latency than what we would see using public cellular,” Honour noted.
The team was impressed with both speed and reliability, particularly in high-density environments like airport terminals where traditional Wi-Fi faces significant challenges. “In an airport, especially when you’re in high-dense areas like terminals, you’re competing for signal. The benefit of using private wireless is that you have dedicated spectrum.”
One early commercial pilot demonstrated transaction speeds 50-70% faster than public cellular networks, highlighting the technology’s potential for business applications within the airport ecosystem.
Ideal Use Cases Emerge
Q: Where has CBRS private wireless proven most valuable at DFW Airport?
Digital signage has emerged as one compelling application. “Digital signage typically isn’t attached to a building; sometimes it’s kind of a one-off thing,” Honour explained. “Traditionally, if we wanted to put up a new sign, let’s say out on International Parkway, we would have to do all of the civil work, the trenching, all the things that come with doing fiber.”
Construction sites across the campus benefit significantly as well. “We can use camera systems running over our private wireless connection. That provides us with robust bandwidth, low latency, as well as a very secure connection for those cameras. And you can pretty much place them anywhere on campus as we do provide outdoor coverage for our entire campus.”
The airport currently has over 40 cameras operating solely on private wireless, demonstrating the technology’s reliability for security applications.
Dramatic Cost Savings
Q: What kind of financial benefits has DFW Airport seen from implementing CBRS?
The cost differential is striking. “If we’re, let’s say, within 1,000 yards of a meet-me location, at a minimum, we’re looking at potentially $50,000 just for one endpoint with fiber, versus now, you have the cost of less than $1,000 for the equivalent field router or CBRS dongle,” Honour stated.
These figures represent just the low end of potential savings. Fiber costs increase substantially for longer distances, making the private wireless alternative even more attractive financially.
Beyond direct costs, Honour emphasized deployment speed as another significant advantage: “If you think about traditionally where you’re going to do your fiber runs, you’re still looking at several weeks, provided that you have a very straightforward path, you’re not hitting anything in your way from a trenching perspective, you don’t have to shut down any roads.”
From Pilot to Production
Q: How has private wireless evolved from pilot to production at DFW Airport?
What began as experimental technology has become a standard service offering. “We have full campus coverage outdoors, and it’s going really great,” Honour explained. “We are adding users probably almost on a daily basis. We have probably somewhere around 800-900 iPad users on the campus for various needs. Some of those are indoors, some of those are outdoors,”
The technology has been integrated into the airport’s standard IT request process. “If you’re in our ticketing system and you’re requesting a device on our form, it states, ‘Does this require off-campus data access?’ And if you say yes, then we’ll pair you with a different approach. But if you say on-campus only, you get put on our private CBRS network.”
Enabling New Possibilities
Q: Has private wireless opened up new opportunities that wouldn’t have been possible before?
The flexible nature of the technology has enabled creative applications. Honour described a recent 5K run event: “We had a runway event, maybe about four or five months ago, where we hosted our first ever 5K on one of our runways. As you can imagine, the runways are pretty far out. There’s not a lot from an infrastructure perspective that’s there.”
“We live-streamed it using the new private wireless network. In that area, it’s not a very populated area, so there wasn’t really great public cell coverage. This is really the only way that you could have achieved this.”
The airport is now exploring additional applications, including vehicle tracking on the airfield, lighting sensors, and even autonomous drone operations using the private wireless infrastructure.
Improving the Passenger Experience
Q: How does private wireless impact the passenger experience at DFW?
One key area is improving operations in the apron area – the space directly beneath aircraft wings where luggage and cargo handling occur. “It’s pretty noisy from a Wi-Fi perspective and can be a little challenging from a public cellular perspective because they’re not zeroed into those spaces that have overhangs,” Honour explained.
The reliability of private wireless can help streamline critical processes: “If you think about all of the things that have to go right in order to have a successful flight, a successful, fast, efficient flight from a loading perspective—as you look at your cargo, you look at the baggage, you see the guy that’s down there with the scanner—the faster that those can scan and upload that information, the faster that plane can take off.”
This direct operational impact ultimately translates to more efficient passenger journeys through the airport.
Implementation Challenges
Q: What obstacles has DFW Airport faced in implementing private wireless?
Device compatibility remains a significant challenge. “There are some scenarios where you can buy a field router dongle and get the compatibility you need. And there are others where it’s not as convenient,” noted Honour. Older devices, in particular, may not be natively compatible with CBRS technology.
Indoor deployment presents more complexity than outdoor implementation. “Outdoor was actually easier. We did our deployment in less than 12 months, covering 27 square miles, which I think is an incredible feat,” Honour explained. “The downside is being able to roll it out quickly indoors, which requires mapping and a lot more hardware, especially if you have a lot of structures in your building.”
Future Outlook
Q: How do you see private wireless evolving at airports like DFW?
Honour sees private wireless technology becoming essential rather than optional. “I see a point where private wireless becomes critical infrastructure that is not a nice to have; it’s required to do business. If you want to have a reliable connection, if you want to have faster connectivity to your endpoint devices, or you want to run your application on the edge, this is pretty much the only solution out there to do it at that level.”
The flexibility of the technology is particularly valuable for airport operations: “Some of the things I really like about what we can do with the technology – being able to splice it, being able to bridge the spectrum together to really customize it to our needs and being able to separate those streams. If I have competing customers that are all part of the same infrastructure, I can give them their own slice and manage it accordingly.”
Advice for Implementation
Q: What guidance would you offer to organizations considering private wireless?
“Find a good partner to work with and really push forward on utilizing the POC (Proof of Concept),” Honour advised. “If you take the time to do a POC and you take the time to get a good POC to really show the value, what you’re going to learn is that this is an amazing technology.”
He emphasized the remarkable deployment speed: “One of the things we did here is that we actually had Nokia come out, and they stood up a private wireless network within about two hours. We were just demoing it inside of the building. Tell me what technologies you can deploy that quickly and actually start using it as a POC.”
For organizations evaluating the technology, Honour recommends focusing on both direct and indirect cost benefits: “Spend the time on getting your financials in order to show the ROI. It’s there, whether you’re looking at some of the soft costs or long-term costs from your typical subscription-based services.”
This interview has been edited for clarity and length while maintaining the substance of the conversation.
