Extended feature: Who will win the race to provide multi-operator small cell solutions?

As towercos increasingly look to diversify their offering to MNOs, and distributed networks become more and more necessary in urban network densification in advance of 5G, the business case for providing small cells as a service could be accelerated with multi-operator small cell solutions. Who are the current leaders in the development of multi-operator small cells, and what business models could they facilitate?

Akin to the multi-tenancy model, multi-operator small cell solutions can enable towercos to generate incremental revenues by offering small cells as a service. By choosing a multi-operator solution, installation of small cells is made more efficient, investments are futureproofed, and myriad opportunities are opened up for towercos to position themselves as the ideal neutral host for operators looking to densify urban outdoor networks and improve indoor coverage.

If you are interested in understanding more about the small cell market and the opportunities for towercos and other third party distributed network service providers, come to the TowerXchange Europe Meetup in London on 4th and 5th April and hear directly from the companies leading the charge.

TowerXchange: Please introduce yourself and your company.

As Vice President of DAS and Small Cell Solutions for Europe I am responsible for promoting the company’s distributed antenna system (DAS), small cell and repeater solutions across Europe. CommScope offers a wide range of network infrastructure solutions that help operators and enterprises build, optimize and improve the efficiency of wireline and wireless networks. Its solutions target: Cellular and other wireless access networks; wireless and wireline fronthaul, backhaul and transport; cable networks; fibre optics networks; data centres; IoT connectivity. These solutions can be deployed both indoor and outdoor environments, ranging from stadiums and public transportation hubs, to medium-sized enterprise locations, to small-business and residential locations.

TowerXchange: What product or service have you developed for the multi-operator small cell market, and under what model does it operate, e.g. multiple independent small cells, multi-radio cells, using shared spectrum, using unlicensed spectrum, or using MulteFire?

CommScope offers the OneCell system – a hybrid small-cell solution that combines features from DAS, C-RAN and small cells to provide a scalable solution for indoor environments with demanding capacity and coverage requirements that uses the Ethernet existing infrastructure for fronthaul.

CommScope solutions include metro-cell concealment solutions for outdoor deployments. These are designed to address the challenges that mobile operators face in moving the telecom infrastructure from macro sites to DAS or small cells – closer to the subscriber and in locations that are less visible, easier to access and difficult to protect.

CommScope believes that unlicensed Wi-Fi and licensed cellular networks will continue to coexist for a number of years inside enterprise environments. Both network types are well-established with enormous user bases. For both permanent and regular inhabitants who need data and internet access, Wi-Fi is the obvious choice. Employees get secure access to the corporate network with no service charges, and no network operator is required to install or run the system. Users need to manually authenticate to the system, but this is a one-time process.

For reliable wireless voice connectivity, and for supporting visitors or customers, cellular is the clear choice. No manual authentication is required, and voice is inherently and fully supported. The user does not become a burden on the enterprise IT department, rather they are supported by their mobile service provider. According to research commissioned by CommScope, 87 percent of building professionals believe that it is imperative to have in-building cellular coverage in all areas of their buildings.

TowerXchange: How proven is your multi-operator product/service? Who is using it?

The OneCell® C-RAN Small Cell Solution was shortlisted by GSMA as a finalist for the 2016 Global Mobile Awards in the Best Technology Enabler category. OneCell forms a single “super” cell indoors that eliminates handovers and border interference across large areas, creating a high performing LTE experience for end-users. OneCell enables sector virtualization with Smart Reuse technology that gives operators the ability to scale capacity within a given spectrum. The OneCell system won Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough, and Outstanding Overall Mobile Technology – the CTO’s Choice, at the Global Mobile Awards 2015.

Sprint uses S1000 small cells for use in traffic-intensive small and medium-sized business locations and Verizon Wireless is the first North American wireless operator to add the ION-E to its approved product list.

DAS solves the problem of not having good wireless service inside buildings and other areas. DAS is still a key tool for delivering the density and high capacity mobile operators need as they roll out LTE networks and look ahead to 5G technology. Today, wireless coverage is built around the idea of digitally transporting wireless signals, and digital DAS is a must-have in the marketplace.  Here are some examples of CommScope’s 5G collaborations:

- The U.S. Advanced Wireless Industry Initiative

- 5Tonic – Open research and innovation laboratory for 5G founded by Telefonica and IMDEA Networks

- 5GAmericas –influential industry trade organization composed of leading telecommunications service providers and manufacturers

- Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance – focused on 5G and accelerating the  development of LTE-Advanced and its ecosystem

TowerXchange: What other use cases do you foresee?

Operators will need to cover more and more buildings from the inside out. In the past, they have focused mostly on public-access venues – big, big venues where lots of people go. Those have been done. Those are big buildings, big systems.   For example, CommScope is the network supplier for Stade de France.

Going forward, we will need to move into those second- and third-tier buildings that are more in the 200,000 to 500,000 sq ft size. These new systems will need to be much lower cost and be deployable by a different type of professional. Maybe an IT professional instead of an RF engineer with 15 years of experience. We’ve been focused on that in-building space, creating the platforms and the ecosystem to allow DAS to scale to a much larger audience.

Also in that space we’ve been developing worldclass indoor smallcell solutions. We have a solution called OneCell that provides a cloud-RAN approach to in-building, giving maximum capacity utilization in a building.

In the outdoor space there will have to be many, many, many more of these small cells, especially in urban and semi-urban environments just to carry the traffic loads.

TowerXchange: What do you see as the potential customer for this product/service, MNO, towerco or property owner?

Small cells have typically been used in small and medium size office buildings and other commercial venues characterized by lower (but still significant) usage volume and fewer operators or frequency bands. Technically DAS can serve the needs of these venues, but because of its high fixed costs DAS has not been a cost-effective solution for them.

C-RAN small cells begin to bridge the gap between these two technologies. Because the baseband processing is centralized, C-RAN can take advantage of higher-capacity microprocessor platforms without burdening the cost of each radio point. And because C-RAN creates a single physical cell, RF planning is simplified relative to standalone small cells in which each access point risks interfering with all of its neighbours. C-RAN enables cell virtualization, a method of creating multiple virtual sectors of capacity within a single physical cell without introducing border interference, by tightly coordinating transmissions between radios and users.

TowerXchange: Please sum up your vision for multi-operator small cells?

The trends that defined the wireless network industry in 2016 are all still in play in 2017. While that might sound like more of the same, it can also be thought of as a prelude to 5G. Now is the time when mobile network operators (MNOs) are laying the groundwork for the future while monetizing and managing their investments from the past. The trends of densification, virtualisation and optimisation are how they will do so.

The general shift in the wireless industry is from cell towers to street poles, from large-sized structures to miniaturized equipment. Densification means adding more sites where users congregate—on city streets and inside large buildings. Metro cell deployments continue to attract a lot of attention. The question is when will there be a major uptick. I expect to see a significant increase for these kinds of deployments in 2017.

The in-building wireless market continues to move from a carrier-funded to enterprise-funded model. We’ve been talking about this transition for a while, but it continues to make headway. The big challenge here is getting the MNOs and enterprises on the same page in terms of roles and responsibilities, deployment quality and other logistics. CommScope continues to strengthen our extensive partner network to better serve and empower enterprises in their wireless needs.

Densification also includes adding more spectrum to existing sites. For macro network base station antennas, we continue to place more ports on antennas (up to 8, 10 or 12 ports) to help push more capacity to existing sites. The evolution to the 4.3-10 connector size is important here. The industry is also exploring millimetre wave spectrum, which we see playing a role in fixed wireless access networks.

Everything is being virtualized in wireless networks. The first step toward capacity virtualization is deploying centralized radio access networks (C-RAN), which pull baseband processing into a centralized location serving multiple cell sites. A US MNO is already utilizing C-RAN to link up three macro sites and 30 metro sites across the downtown area of a major city. Fibre cabling links all of these sites. In the future, such deployments will enable true C-RAN, meaning Cloud-RAN, where network capacity can be moved around to hot spots throughout the day.

At the cell tower site, the C-RAN architecture makes it possible for operators to use smaller cabinets and platforms at the bottom of the tower because there is less equipment at the edge. CommScope now offers pre-assembled steel platforms with cabinets and generators already installed to address this market need. MNOs will hopefully enjoy some cost savings due to lower power requirements and leasing costs in the C-RAN model.

Operators are still highly focused on controlling the user experience, and rightly so. Keeping customers happy is the core of their businesses.  How to best use unlicensed spectrum is a question to be sorted out in 2017. The rudimentary first steps involved offloading traffic onto Wi-Fi, but that does not enable the quality control MNOs want. LTE-Unlicensed and License-Assisted Access make carrier-controlled use of unlicensed spectrum possible. MNOs still get the benefits of offload but can control the experience. Ultimately there will be a co-existence of Wi-Fi, other unlicensed technologies and licensed spectrum especially inside buildings. Managing spectrum to minimize network performance issues remains a mission-critical concern.

Looking down the road a bit further, an emerging trend – and buzz word for last 10 years – is network convergence. It’s been talked about a lot, but I see it truly happening in 5G. Network convergence means wireline and wireless networks coming together to best serve users. Fibre networks will become more pervasive in carrying wireless network traffic, moving from the core to the network edge. The last mile can be fibre or wireless, with millimetre wave competing with fibre for short drops in the RAN. Wireless has clearly won in user preferences, but it will be a combination of wireless and fibre that links them back to the core.

None of these trends—densification, virtualisation, optimisation and convergence—is brand new. But 2017 will see more work being done, and more resources being deployed, for all of them. More cell sites, capacity, virtualization, spectrum and fibre will all continue. The one constant in the wireless industry is “more.” Users want more bandwidth, MNOs need more capacity, and vendors like CommScope are rushing ahead to develop more solutions. While 2017 might look like more of the same, I expect to see significant developments in laying the foundation for 5G.

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Samuel Buttarelli, Vice President

DAS and Small Cell Solutions, Europe, CommScope

Samuel Buttarelli is Vice President of DAS and Small Cell Solutions, Europe, CommScope. He is responsible for promoting the company’s distributed antenna system (DAS), small cell and repeater solutions across Europe.

Prior to his current role, Samuel was responsible for Southern Europe.  He previously served as the global product line mangare for the Filter and Power Amplifier Group.  Samuel has engineering experience in research and development for GSM base station components and subsystems. During his time at Allen Telecom, he was responsible for business development of GSM subsystems in the North America and China markets.

Samuel holds a master’s of science degree in telecommunications and an MBA from the Polytechnic Institute of Milan.

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