So far, major public access or enterprise small cell roll-outs have been a question of hope triumphing over experience. There have been a few high profile projects, mainly from Japanese and South Korean operators, which have provided valuable insights into the potential of the technology, but have been too expensive and specialized to be widely replicated. Major US roll-outs next year, especially by AT&T, promise to be more significant in laying the groundwork for a standards-based approach ‘ essential to small cell economics and carrier confidence ‘ but most cellcos have no wish to live at the cutting edge, and will not embark on the road to a HetNet until the business case, the costs, and standards-based interoperability are all well established.
The Small Cell Forum’s Release Program is essential to this necessary progression, and this week’s Small Cells Americas event in Dallas saw the unveiling of the second phase in this important initiative. Aiming to reduce carrier risk and kickstart mass-scale deployment, the first Release, announced at Mobile World Congress in February, targeted residential femtocells, while the latest one focuses on the enterprise. Subsequent releases, next year, will address public access urban metrozones, in two separate stages.
The Release Program provides a base of case studies, technical guides and other documents, which create a framework for the business case and best practice around small cells.
In some ways, the enterprise is the most complex business and technical area, because many parties are involved in roll-outs. In the other scenarios, the operator has full control and responsibility for the small cell networks, but in many enterprises, it will share cost, risk and management with the company itself and other involved parties such as integrators, IT firms and landlords. In addition, the small cells will often have to interoperate with existing infrastructure including wired and wireless LANs, PBXs and DAS (distributed antenna systems).
These factors have sometimes held carriers back from major enterprise projects, even though most are targeting increased revenues in the business sector as consumer ARPUs stagnate. Release Two’s documents aim to reduce the risk by providing blueprints on which all carriers can draw, and by setting out the potential benefits to operators and to enterprises.
For companies, these include improved indoor coverage for voice and data and the chance to support new, location-aware services for employees and customers. For operators, they include better quality of service for corporate clients, which in turn boosts revenue and reduces churn, and the chance to play a more strategic role in a large organization’s overall technology.
Release Two consists of over 20 new or completely revised documents to help address barriers to small cell deployment in the enterprise. The resource base includes market drivers analysis; a comprehensive business case; an enterprise reference architecture; use cases for SON (self-optimizing networks, a key element in the ability to monetize small cells); and documents addressing Wi-Fi and enterprise IT integration, and backhaul. The content is driven by operator requirements, fed in by Forum members, and builds on experiences and best practice of some early deployers.
Gordon Mansfield, chair of the Small Cell Forum, said in a statement: ‘Addressing the wide range of enterprise cellular requirements has conventionally been challenging for operators both from a technical and a business perspective. Using small cells enables challenges to be addressed in unique ways, to the benefit of operators and enterprises alike, delivering value for both.’
The business case, commissioned from independent consultancy Real Wireless, is a centrepiece of the Release, because it finds what Mansfield calls ‘a compelling commercial argument for small cells in almost every enterprise context. In fact in all the cases examined except one, the payback period for both the operator and the enterprise was found to be less than a year.’
The Small Cell Forum has published more than 50 new and revised documents since the Release Program was launched in February 2013. Release Two is available to download at www.scf.io.
The industry hopes that such initiatives will finally open the floodgates to rapid global deployment. The latest report from Maravedis-Rethink’s RAN Service, entitled ‘The Network is Software Now: adapting to the new mobile economics 2013-2018’, says that although public access small cells will see more gradual uptake than initially expected in 2013-2014, the pace will pick up from 2015, hitting 7.5m unit sales in 2018, with 75% of those cells integrating Wi-Fi.
In particular, early roll-outs of public access small cells will be heavily focused on indoor locations as well as the enterprise. The balance towards indoor sites will be heavier than envisaged in early 2013, and is driven by several factors:
‘ The percentage of data being consumed indoors is turning out to be even higher than industry forecasts suggested
‘ Enterprise and venue deployments, in areas like stadiums and malls, have attractive business cases and provionde scenarios in which operators can share upfront costs with venue owners, and often have some guaranteed revenue
‘ Outdoor metrocells face more barriers to deployment than indoor, especially in terms of site acquisition and availability of good backhaul and power. This is leading many operators to focus initially on the low hanging fruit of indoor roll-out
‘ In some cases, like that of O2 UK in London, operators are relying initially on carrier Wi-Fi to provide outdoor data metrozones. This carries less cost and risk, but can also be a ‘dress rehearsal’ for cellular small cells, which may be able to share the hotspot’s sites and backhaul
This means that, while total small cell investment will reach similar levels in 2018 to those forecast earlier in the year, the market will see slower growth than expected in 2013-2014, especially in the outdoor space.
The Forum’s own predictions say that 11.5m public and enterprise small cells will be deployed by 2018, up from 168,000 today (excluding femtocells). In an update, the body said 56 mobile operators were currently using some kind of small cell, most of them residential femtocells (44 carriers), while 26 were implementing enterprise platforms and 17 public access. By 2018, half the small cells deployed will be for non-residential uses, the group predicts. Mansfield agrees that the real uptick will come in 2015. He said: “The numbers will grow in 2014, but it’s in 2015 and beyond that the volumes will really start to ramp.”
When the market does take off, key drivers will be full availability of SoC-based options; easier deployment via LTE-A standards like eICIC; and integration with carrier-class Wi-Fi. It will also be vital that some of the issues of outdoor roll-out, such as backhaul and interference with other macro or small cell networks, are fully addressed. Another of these is site acquisition, and there is considerable discussion about ways to streamline and standardize the process of signing up hundreds of thousands of locations ‘ hence the rising interest in SCaaS (small cell as a service) offerings, in which a third party acts as a neutral host and handles all the site issues for its carrier customers.
The large OEMs see a role for themselves in this, either by supporting SCaaS themselves or offering integration services to their cellco customers. Alcatel-Lucent has been particularly vocal about the advantages of an end-to-end solution, which removes many implementation headaches from operators but, of course, denies them the advantages of multivendor networks ‘ one of the most potent promises of the commoditized small cell approach.
ALU announced its Metrocell Express Site Certification Program at the show, working with nine partners initially. These include US cablecos, a leading player in the global outdoor advertising market, systems integrators, managed services providers, site acquisition specialists and others, with names such as Crown Castle, EdgeConneX, Knight Enterprises and Zayo. Cellcos will be able to select certified program members to speed installation of metrocells while addressing needs such as real estate, increased network capacity, ongoing break-fix and asset management.
ALU’s initial partners bring more than 600,000 qualified sites, split about 50:50 between the US and Europe, and including over 150,000 serviceable on-net buildings; 325,000 street assets including outdoor advertising hoardings; 30,000 rooftops; 10,000 fiber-to-the-building assets; public utility right of way access in US cities; and over 200,000 route miles of fiber in primary urban and suburban markets across the US. “This isn’t going to solve every problem for an operator, but it gives us a way forward to accelerate the deployments of small cells,” said Mike Schabel, VP of ALU’s small cells business.
Another set of players with a keen interest in SCaaS is the cable industry. These MSOs, especially in the US, already terminate fiber at lamp posts and buildings, so they could also provide locations and backhaul. They often have building and licensing rights to install boxes on poles and walls, so Cisco’s Todd Nightingale, speaking on a panel in Dallas, spoke for many when he said: ‘Small cells as a service is a home run for MSOs’, while Jitesh Bhayani, VP of business services marketing at Time Warner Cable, said: “From a cable MSO perspective, we would want to own it. There are several [SCaaS} trials that are being lined up right now.