Densification in 2016 is no longer just an ugly word, but an ugly business challenge. It is now a real and urgent part of many cellular operators’ strategies to turn the inexorable rise of mobile traffic into profits. A few MNOs in Japan and Korea, blessed with plentiful fiber and access to the latest technologies, have blazed the trail. But for most operators, there are far bigger hurdles in the way of building massive capacity, in targeted areas, into their networks, and so supporting new business cases and laying foundations for 5G. The essential technologies – various small cell form factors, effective self-optimizing network (SON) tools and so on – are falling into place rapidly. The bigger barriers lie in…