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Monday, 8 August 2022

Verizon's Growing Small Cells Footprint

Verizon was in news recently when their CTO, Ed Chan, mentioned that the operator had plans to speed up its small cell buildout starting in 2023. Light Reading quoted in an article:

His comments, made to financial analysts at Wells Fargo, come after the small cell market in the US took a breather during 2021 as big network operators focused on building out their new midband spectrum holdings via bigger, macro cell sites.

"Verizon anticipates small cells activity will ramp in 2023 as activity shifts toward 16t16r deployments from early 8t8r deployments built in 2022," wrote the Wells Fargo analysts of their recent meeting with Chan. Newer 5G radios can generally support more antennas, including 16T16R configurations.

"Chan also referenced that a third party had taken longer to grow scale and expertise to handle the installs Verizon had planned, but that it is reaching a point where a higher mix will trend toward third-party deployments from self deployments today," the analysts added.

Verizon officials did not respond to questions from Light Reading about Chan's meeting with Wells Fargo executives. The meeting is not listed among the operator's recent public investor events.

The small cell news could be important to equipment vendors, ranging from Airspan to Ericsson to CommScope. Jennifer Fritzsche, managing director at investment bank Greenhill & Company, wrote recently that Chan's comments could presage a resurgence in the US small cell market. She speculated that Verizon could turn to third-party small cell providers like Crown Castle and ExteNet Systems.

Small cells are big in the USA but the definition of it has become a bit fuzzy. In the old days it used to be an all-in-one unit but now anything that is deployed with an omnidirectional antenna or anything that is deployed on lamp posts or poles can be considered a small cell. 

Over the last few years we have looked at the small cells pics in the USA (see related posts at the bottom), so here are some of them from Verizon.

Quoting again from the Light Reading article:

Verizon is widely regarded as the leader in small cells in the US. The company has so far deployed 30,000 small cells sites for its millimeter wave (mmWave) 5G network.

"We continue to deploy millimeter wave, which is a key part of our network, providing massive bandwidth in dense urban areas," said Verizon's Rima Qureshi, the operator's chief strategy officer, during a recent Verizon investor event. But company officials haven't provided any specific goals for small cell buildout in 2023 and beyond.

T-Mobile has said that it eventually expects to operate around 40,000 to 50,000 small cells as it completes its big 5G network buildout, while AT&T at one point had planned to operate 40,000 small cells by 2015. But AT&T did not meet its goal, and company officials have remained quiet about small cells since.

Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile have all been working to deploy their midband 5G spectrum holdings, and that work has shifted their focus away from small cells. Macro cell towers can cover wide geographic areas, while small cells – which typically sit atop street lights and rooftops rather than large cell towers – are primarily viewed as a method to improve capacity rather than coverage.

Which one is your favourite? Let us know if you have more pictures.

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