Spectrum for rent, with a twist

At the recent auctions for 800MHz & 2600MHz spectrum here in the UK, a company by the name of Niche Spectrum Ventures Ltd (a subsidiary of BT) won 2x15MHz of FDD and 10MHz of TDD. 

There has been a lot of speculation about how a company that does not own a mobile infrastructure could use such spectrum and the conclusion is usually a) they build a network from scratch or b) they re-sell or lease the spectrum to an existing mobile operator.

However another business model I have been thinking of is a lot more interesting and it goes something like this..

A company wins some spectrum. It purchases and installs LTE small cells in key locations. These are fairly cheap and easy to install. If that company has transport network assets (like BT) then all the better. Once the small cells are installed and connected to an IP backbone, the company sells access to existing mobile operators. They way it does this is via MOCN (Multi Operator Core Network) functionality. For each customer that signs up their PLMN ID is broadcasted by the small cell and their core network is connected to the IP backbone. The specs allow for up to 6 PLMNs to be broadcasted so potentially all the existing mobile operators could be customers. What about the interworking of the LTE small cells with the existing network of the customer? Well, LTE has a raft of SON features that can take care of all of that with the minimum of manual intervention.  For neighbour planning the ANR feature can take care of that. This will work for intra-freq LTE, inter-freq LTE and IRAT. All it takes is for some UEs to camp on the small cell and send some measurement reports. PCI planning can also be automated as is RACH planning. As the core network is owned by the incumbent mobile operators do they have to do anything? Well not much. The S1 setup procedure takes care of that as it allows the MME and eNodeB to exchange the information they require to interwork. Finally from a UE perspective, MOCN functionality is mandatory in LTE so UE support is guaranteed.

As the company only owns radio network assets the management of the network is fairly simple as everything else (core network, billing, subscriber management etc) belongs to the mobile network operators.

That is it. All it takes is a commercial agreement, the PLMN ID of the customer and some minimal configuration.