Small cells and shared spectrum forecast to 2025

Shared spectrum combined with small cell technology will open up every major enterprise to a new era of indoor cellular performance, previously undreamed of, says a new report out this week from Rethink Technology Research.

The US will pioneer this with CBRS and Rethink forecasts that by 2025, shared spectrum small cells will account for almost half (48%) of total new installations, and CBRS will still represent two-thirds of those, running in both 5G and 4G. The bulk of these will be within enterprise.

“Small cells and shared spectrum: making the mobile enterprise a reality at last?” shows there could be as many as 3.7 million base stations using shared spectrum installed globally by 2025.

The report shows best case, worst case and middle case, based on future regulator decisions – Regulators must trigger much of this activity by making clear and early decisions before the end of 2019.

There is an opportunity here for disruption of MNO business from alternative deployers, as shared spectrum will allow companies who do not own spectrum to build centrally controlled wireless networks of their own for the first time.

New types of operators, including neutral hosts, cloud providers, cablecos and enterprise integrators, will be able to harness shared spectrum and small cells to deploy specialized capabilities just where they are needed, and so to make a stronger business case for enterprise services than an MNO usually can.

Companies mentioned in this report:

Airband TVWS consortium, Airspan, Altice, American Tower, Amazon AWS, Athonet, AT&T, Berkeley Vaitronics, Boingo, BMW, CableLabs, CBRS Alliance, CDE Lightband, Charter Communications, Cisco, Comcast, CommScope, Cox, Crown Castle, Daimler, Dell, Department of Defense, Ericsson, ExteNet, Federated Wireless, FCC, GE, Google, JMA Wireless, LoRa, Mercedes, Microsoft, Mobilitie, Nokia, NTIA, Ruckus Wireless, Samsung, Sigfox, Sprint, T-Mobile USA, Verizon, Volkswagen, WinnForum, Zinwave

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