Small Cells World Summit 2024 took place in a new venue in the heart of London’s Westminster, a neighborhood that boasts one of Europe’s largest clusters of outdoor small cells, deployed by a mixture of mobile operators and neutral hosts. That was an appropriate backdrop for a conference that focused heavily on diverse deployment models, and the relationships between MNOs and other small cell providers. 

It was just one of the important themes explored by speakers, panellists and delegates at an event that packed a large amount of varied and valuable content into its two days. Attendance was strong and the audience highly engaged in a programme that was hosted by SCF’s chief strategy officer, Simon Fletcher, and CEO, Sue Monahan. 

Like many industry conversations at the current time, the conference started on a cautious note, reflecting on the challenges of a difficult global economy and the impact of reduced operator spending worldwide. But it finished in fully forward-looking mode, exploring emerging opportunities in areas such as edge compute, millimeter wave spectrum and active small cell network sharing. 

Fletcher kicked off proceedings with an analyst panel that discussed the challenges of the 5G business model, and the pessimism that slow uptake of 5G Standalone has created in the mobile world as a whole. While acknowledging that some 5G services and revenues have not taken off as expected, panellists and speakers made the important point that the small cells segment is increasingly distinct from the public macro network business. Some of the 5G use cases that have been disappointing in the public networks, such as edge convergence, are making steady progress in small cells, often in a private networks context. 

A clear theme of the event, then, was that the small cell ecosystem is evolving differently from that of traditional mobile networks, and should not be measured in the same way. In many ways, its cycles and economics are closer to those of enterprise WiFi than of macro 5G, and many speakers provided case studies in which small cells, WiFi and DAS were all essential, and all working together – far from the ‘WiFi versus cellular’ arguments of the past.  

‘Everything but the macro’, as Andrew Conway of Boldyn titled his presentation, emerged from the conference as a good way to define the small cell market around convergence of multiple technologies, including edge compute, to support a wide variety of service providers and use cases from a common platform – multi-purpose networks for many scenarios were the heart of the argument for several of the organisations presenting. 

And many new developments happen first in small cells – virtualised RAN, for instance, is less risky to deploy first in a greenfield and geographically constrained network than in a macro RAN. And there were plenty of case studies of small cells that were supporting just the kind of services that were dreamed of for 5G, even if those have not yet reached the macro networks. From industrial and interactive citizen services in the huge smart cities of Saudi Arabia, as described by neutral host ACES, to hi-tech applications in enterprise buildings, as companies such as CommScope and Freshwave discussed, we saw many tastes of the full-blown 5G SA experience, enabled by small cells. 

Another area that has been a disappointment for much of the mobile industry so far is Open RAN, but here too, progress has been earlier and faster in small cells than elsewhere. There were two panel debates about Open RAN, one mainly focused on deployers and the other on industry alliances. In the former, BT and Wireless Infrastructure Group were open about the challenges of platform maturity and scalability but were also able to point to concrete steps forward, and to a roadmap to harness Open RAN to improve the economics of densification.  

The second panel included representatives from SCF, Open Air Interface and O-RAN Alliance and was, perhaps inevitably, more upbeat, but also gave valuable insights into the cooperation between different bodies to accelerate innovation and deployment. 

That theme of cooperation was a persistent one. Just as SCF works with other organizations to maximize its impact on the mobile industry as a whole, so every small cell stakeholder works with a variety of partners to address the different and complex needs of environments such as cities, business parks, ports or large property developments. Common frameworks help to shield deployers from the complexity of deployments and architectures, and there was plenty of discussion about the important JOTS NHIB specifications, which will soon be extended from indoor to outdoor neutral host roll-outs. 

Neutral hosts were front and centre of SCWS, which reflects SCF’s significant role in defining the shared network model for small cells and helping enable a platform that can support private operators and neutral hosts as well as MNOs. Not that the MNOs were absent, for example, VMO2’s Imran Ashraf recounted the challenges of one of the UK’s biggest deployments. 

There were many other important themes under discussion, from the impact of public policy and regulatory change on small cells, to integration with non-terrestrial networks, to topical issues of power efficiency and sustainability. And while the event was clear-sighted in focusing on real business cases, and did not shy away from challenges, it also showcased some of the more recent developments that will help to enhance the small cell proposition in the next few years. An important example was millimeter wave spectrum, and there was a lively debate about potential use cases for the high-frequency airwaves, to coincide with the publication of SCF’s latest paper, which provides detailed analysis of ‘pathways to growth in mmWave-capable small cell solutions’. 

Innovations such as readily deployable mmWave cells will help to diversify the small cell network business model still further, and at SCWS, these topics helped to allay the general caution about the wider mobile economy. The confidence that small cells will be part of the solution to such challenges was summed up in the highlights that were shared from SCF’s upcoming annual forecast and service provider survey. The full documents will be published in July, but a preview for SCWS delegates showed a high level of intention to deploy new technologies, such as mmWave and RAN AI, in commercial networks before the end of 2026; and a forecast that, despite some caution in the outlook for 2024, envisages higher levels of roll-out in 2026-2028 than we predicted a year ago.  

While the conference mood was clear-eyed about the challenges confronting the industry, delegates and SCF itself were upbeat about how to forge a way forward. SCF CSO Simon Fletcher concluded the show by emphasizing the need for relentless focus on strategies to realize the substantial investments in LTE and 5G. To this end, in the year ahead SCF aims to explore the technologies, business models, and regulatory frameworks to deliver scalable special purpose networks tailored to address a myriad of profitable use cases.  

Fletcher argued that this approach not only mitigates the high infrastructure investment costs but also maximizes the utilization of resources in areas with high demand.