Definition
Communications or data equipment located at the user's site rather than at the service provider's facility, owned or leased by the customer and connected to a provider's network. In aviation contexts, CPE typically refers to the on-site hardware (modems, routers, terminals, antennas) that link a flight school, FBO, or operator to external data services such as weather feeds or flight planning systems.
Plain English
The communications gear that sits at your location and connects you to an outside service, like the box and wiring a provider installs at a flight school so it can receive weather data or internet service.
Context Anchor
Seen in FAA acronym lists and communications-system references; it is not normally a cockpit callout or aircraft-control term.
Derivation
From 'customer' (the end user), 'premise' meaning the building or location where something is installed, and 'equipment.' The term came from the telecommunications industry to distinguish gear at the user's site from gear inside the provider's network.
Why Pilots Care
This term usually matters when reading about FAA communications systems, service connections, or equipment outages, rather than when directly flying the aircraft.
Analogy
Like the cable modem and router a home internet provider installs in your house — the network belongs to the provider, but the box on your wall belongs to (or is leased by) you.
Intuition Check
“Premise” does not mean an assumption here. Here it means the customer’s physical location or site.
Example Sentence 1
The flight school's weather data feed runs through CPE installed in the dispatch office.
Example Sentence 2
Maintenance logs showed the CPE had been upgraded to support the new digital link.