While you may have heard of small cells in conversation or in passing, it is likely that you truly had a) no idea what they were and b) never realized the many ways in which they could benefit your business. This article will highlight this increasingly popular term, its capabilities to completely revolutionize your operations, and why now is the time to take a closer look at the product.


Highlighted for being a cost-effective solution that traditional fixed line and mobile operators are flocking to, small cells can be defined as an offering that can be utilized to not only extend but also enhance mobile service to the home and enterprise over broadband access. Continuously delivering new IP-based applications to measure up to increasing user demands is key nowadays, and with a small cells offering in place, operators can expand network capacity without being forced to totally revamp the circuit-based mobile core found within an enterprise network.

Advantages of Small Cells

Besides being able to overcome specific network capacity obstacles, data off-load requirements and in-building coverage issues, small cells can:

  • Bring customer satisfaction to an unparalleled level
  • Reduce subscriber churn
  • Introduce new high-margin revenue streams 


According to Jagdish Rebello, an analyst at IHS (News - Alert) iSuppli, "This is a real solution to a real problem the carriers are facing. And it's a solution the carriers can control completely."

Why Operators Should Begin Leveraging Small Cells

Major companies including Verizon Wireless and AT&T (News - Alert) have already jumped on the small cells bandwagon, so the underlying question is why? One of the major factors for this migration is the fact that data traffic will continue to rise over the years, with estimates that it will increase nearly 12-fold by 2017. Thus, carriers who have already moved to 4G LTE (News - Alert) networks, which come with a guarantee of higher data speeds for end-users, need a solution that can enhance the amount of spectrum that is available at their fingertips. While heavy hitting enterprises are already aware of this problem and have taken to “hoarding spectrum” as a preemptive measure to support bandwidth growth, small cells look to be the one product that could help to overcome this and other challenges once and for all, a recent piece commented.

Receiving a lot of buzz as the days pass and as temperatures begin to soar here on the East Coast, it is a safe bet that the small cells space, too, will continue to grow. "We're at very high hype levels. The hype peaks and drops, and then the real deployments begin. I don't think we've peaked on small cell hype yet," concluded Ira Palti, CEO of Ceragon (News - Alert).




Edited by Blaise McNamee