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This week on HetNet Happenings, RCR Wireless News Managing Editor Sean Kinney takes you inside the Small Cells World Summit event, which also included portions on carrier Wi-Fi and backhaul, from the ExCel Centre in London, England.
Small cells have been a long time coming with projections far exceeding actual large-scale deployments. Industry leaders gathered for Small Cells World Summit to discuss the emerging technology, which appear poised to finally take off in 2015.
Kevin Duffy, president and founder of Fastback Networks, discussed the myriad backhaul challenges associated with successfully deploying small cells at scale.
Duffy pointed to the absence of fiber as one of the key hindrances to small cells becoming an integral network component. He estimated that build-out and go live associated with small cells needs to cost less than $20,000 to be feasible for carriers.
That scalability is key as a small cell can, at best, support 500 moderate users. To make a material impact, carriers would have to deploy tens of thousands of small cells, which means capex and opex are critical.
On the software side, Justin Paul, head of OSS marketing for Amdocs, discussed the need for software solutions that are telecom-specific and geared toward maximizing both end-user benefit and return on investment.
For a use case, Nathan Sutter of Nex-Tech Wireless discusses how small cells were able to facilitate a rapid indoor deployment.
Sutter said customer complaints prompted the Tier three carrier to rethink its indoor coverage and capacity solution for the stadium at Fort Hayes State College in Kansas.
The Nex-Tech team went from conception and design to a live deployment in just 75 days in time for the venue to host a packed graduation event.
He differentiated between upgrading the existing distributed antenna system and the relatively straight forward small cells deployment.
