Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Consul ti ng
ERTI X
Consul ti ng
Small Cell Technology is Ready,
but are Carrier Organizations?
Vertix Consulting | March 2014 1
Small cells are a
critical tool for the
carriers to more
efficiently utilize
their spectrum
assets and to take
a more surgical
approach to adding
network capacity.
Small Cell Technology is Ready,
but are Carrier Organizations?
With the upcoming wave of small cells, wireless carriers are facing a signifcant
shift in the way networks are designed, deployed, and operated. In general,
their organizations, processes, tools and vendor relationships are not
structured to fully beneft from the speed, cost, and quality advantages that
small cells can ofer. Worse yet, the large carriers are often encumbered by a
macro-network mindset that makes the development and implementation of
a comprehensive small cell strategy even more challenging. Carriers will need
to strategically evolve existing capabilities in order to achieve the improved
price points and shorter timeframes associated with small cell deployments.
There is little argument that data growth on carrier networks will necessitate
continued coverage improvement and densifcation that cannot be
accomplished just by adding more towers. When carriers shift voice trafc
to VoLTE the need for data capacity is exacerbated. Global mobile data
consumption grew 81% in 2013 and is forecasted to grow at a compound
annual growth rate of 61% over the next fve years.
1
Small cells are a critical tool for the carriers to more efciently utilize their
spectrum assets and to take a more surgical approach to adding network
capacity. In the past, carriers would identify an overloaded sector and have
to either add radios or deploy an additional cell site. Other than costly DAS
networks, these solutions gave little fexibility to address the consumption
profle that was causing the capacity constraint (e.g., was there a particular
commercial area that was the source of the problem or was it capacity
demands across the sector). Firemen dont douse an entire neighborhood
with water when one house is on fre carriers shouldnt throw up a new
macro site when the problem may be solved with an appropriately placed
and much more attractively priced small cell.
EVOLVING CARRIER NETWORK ORGANIZATION CAPABILITIES
Small cells enable carriers to deploy targeted solutions to address the
root cause of their network capacity and performance issues. However,
carrier network organizations are not built to execute on these solutions.
Historically, in-building and DAS systems were managed by dedicated
teams that specialized in the nuances of these types of deployments.
These capabilities will need to be scaled or more broadly distributed
across the organization as small cell deployments grow to represent
a much larger share of the workload.
ERTI X
Consul ti ng