Small cells out in the open

As mentioned in previous posts I am a big fan of small cells/femto cells, so it was great to see Vodafone in the UK using the product in a novel way. Essentially they are deploying these in small rural communities with no existing macro coverage, but rather that the more typical operator led installation, they are asking rural communities to contact them and also provide the physical locations for installation and the necessary broadband connectivity. So all Vodafone have to do, is turn up mount the product on a chimney/wall/post and off you go. There is lots more detail here.

These small cells typically radiate around 1W, as compared to the 20-30W of a typical macro base station and can handle around 32 connected users. They are also self configuring (cell ID, PSC, neighbour detection) so require very little or no planning.

Small cells become a lot more interesting (and complicated) when they are deployed in the presence of a macro (so called HetNets), but even so the above story is still very interesting and encouraging to see.