NEWS

Macro Towers And Small Cells In The 5G Infrastruture

Time of issue:

2017-09-15 16:51

Source:

Vendors of small cells expect that market to ramp up significantly over the next few years as carriers look to densify their networks. But traditional tower companies (American Tower, Crown Castle, Dycom Industries, SBA Communications and Zayo), they say they’re not threatened by that growing market.

AT&T said that it expects to see initial commercial 5G deployments by the end of 2019, which is roughly a year ahead of previous forecasts. And much of the hype is centered on small cells and fiber.

ExteNet, also predicted the number of active small-cell sites in the United States will grow from between 80,000 and 100,000 in July 2017 to roughly 500,000 by 2021.

In dense metro areas, executives spoke about the potential for antennas located on every street corner, with fronthaul fiber connecting these nodes back to the network core.

But the traditional infrastructure companies, believe the emergence of 5G will benefit the entire tower market. Crown Castle has opted to embrace small cells in a move that is already paying dividends, while American Tower continues to stay at arm’s length as it focuses instead on the indoor DAS (distributed antenna systems) segment.

With regard to 5G specifically, the private tower companies noted if history was a guide, every upgrade to a new generation (‘G’) of service (i.e. 2G to 3G, 3G to 4G) was a very good time for towers.

There was much talk about macros representing the ‘core’ in a 5G world, with some predicting there will be thousands of mini-data centers at the base of the towers as more of this fiber from C-RAN is centralized in one location and data moves closer to the edge.

Crown Castle believes it is well-positioned to participate given its asset mix across macro towers, small cells and fiber—all of which will be key elements in 5G infrastructure.