ATLANTA – Small cells remain a bit of an outlier for rural and regional carriers, which typically don’t fall into the traditional use cases that small cells are known to solve.
However, the segment was looking to bridge that gap through an educational panel at this week’s Competitive Carriers Association Global Expo that followed up the release of a new program from the Small Cell Forum looking at “rural and remote” deployments.
The panel got off to a slow start as none of the carriers in attendance said they had deployed small cells or were even in lab trials using small cells. Some did admit that small cells were on their road maps, but even that was just a few.
Looking to at least build some momentum, Small Cell Forum CEO Sue Monahan laid out some of the findings from the Release Five document, which claimed the integration of small cells into rural deployments could open up access to 650 million new cellular users around the world worth an estimated $163 billion.
That increased access includes the targeting of remote communities that so far have not shown return on investments required for a traditional macro deployment; providing coverage to offshore platforms and ships; delivering services immediately following a disaster; adding value to rural businesses; enabling voice calls to aircraft; and providing network access to emergency services.
Monahan said the Small Cell Forum expects the enterprise segment to be one of the faster-growing markets for small cell technologies, though progress to this point has been hampered by integration challenges with IT departments. With rural enterprises less likely to have such controlling IT departments, the chance for rural carriers to integrate small cells into those facilities should be easier.
Paul Senior, CTO and co-founder of Airspan, dove deeper into the release report, noting that a cost benefit analysis of deploying an 800 MHz-based LTE network comparing the use of macro sites and small cells shows a strong benefit for small cells. That win was based on the ability to focus small cell deployments on areas in which people typically use their services as compared with “shotgun” coverage provided by a macro site. There were a lot of assumptions built into the model, including the availability of sufficient backhaul capabilities, but Senior added that even if comparing coverage on an “apples-to-apples” basis, a small cell deployment was competitive in total cost of ownership.
Sprint, which is one of CCA’s largest members, touched on its small cell progress, noting that it has been working in the space since 2006 through an enterprise project with Nextel Communications.
Mark Lipford, director of global standards and ecosystem development at Sprint, looked to bring a smaller view to the market by noting small cells provide a good alternative to carriers in providing broadband alternatives to the consumer and enterprise markets. Lipford explained that Sprint conducted trials of such technology using dedicated consumer products that showed promising results. Lipford also said that small cells provided easier zoning approval compared with traditional macro sites and could help carriers meet spectrum license build-out requirements, especially if they were deployed in more densely populated areas of rural markets.
With the potential benefits laid out, Lipford also noted challenges to small cell deployments. Those include integration with Wi-Fi services, backhaul availability and pricing, and security concerns for small cells deployed in public places. Lipford also said the actual deployment of small cells needs to be simplified, with Sprint looking for vendors to provide solutions that can be installed out of the box within 15 minutes.
While the benefits laid out looked to sway a leery audience, it remains to be seen whether they are strong enough to warrant a change in attitude from smaller operators.
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