A session at Small Cells World Summit spotlighted the UK’s leadership in shared 5G infrastructure, with real-world progress in Oxford and Worthing offering a model for outdoor neutral host deployments that balance technical ambition, public-private cooperation, and commercial pragmatism.
In sum – what to know:
UK offers a blueprint – international eyes are on the UK as it proves outdoor neutral host models are viable.
Oxford and Worthing – smart lighting and seasonal 5G highlight a replicable, multi-operator model.
Practical progress – despite hurdles and distractions, and lots to do, decent collaboration is happening.
Here’s another replay from yesterday, from a morning session at Small Cells World Summit in London about UK-based endeavours to build high-end 5G networks using outdoor neutral host infrastructure – with interesting local examples from Oxford and Worthing, and good anecdotal discussion about public/private sector interplay, and changing governmental and industrial hurdles to get such projects off the ground.
The panel combined three close stakeholders on the supply side: UK tower firm Cornerstone Telecoms Infrastructure Limited (CTIL; Cornerstone), US neutral host provider IONX Networks (formerly Dense Air; since May), and Dutch lighting outfit Signify (once Philips Lighting). These firms have worked together variously across the projects in Oxford and Worthing, and elsewhere. In London, they made out like the UK is positioned – and also viewed – as a leader in the field.
Necessarily, Cornerstone also made passing reference to the new VodafoneThree joint venture in the UK, which has stakes in both UK network-sharing ventures – in the Vodafone/Telefónica setup, with Cornerstone, and also in the EE/Three camp, with MBNL. Jamie Hayes, chief sales and commercial officer at Cornerstone led the sesssion with a scene-setting summary about the challenges to provide better and broader UK 5G coverage.
There are three challenges, he said: coverage that is both highly pervasive (“which spans every inch of our urban and rural footprint, indoors and outdoors”) and highly resilient (“not just a single shared-fate architecture”), and which does not break the bank nor the reputation of its operating companies. “For operators, protecting revenue and brand is unforgivingly competitive.” Hayes referenced the rise of eSIM as another consumer power play to focus minds.
“Expectations are rising; loyalty is earned daily,” he said. The operator community – everywhere – has to deliver a service that customers will pay for; the nitty-gritty of public/private sector negotiation and investment to get small cells into local communities is the only way to do it. “Pressure is mounting,” he said. VodafoneThree’s £11 billion promise to the UK competition authority to build a world-beating 5G NR network should “raise the bar for everybody,” he suggested.
On the UK leadership thing: Darren Ballard, vice president of business development at IONX Networks, described the UK as a proving ground for neutral host models through projects like in Oxford and Worthing (see below) – to validate technical and commercial template that is now being “proven in practice”; Barnaby Dickinson, senior advisor at Signify, said the UK had “a new blueprint” for shared small cell deployments on street-light luminaires, as in Oxford.
Hayes said industry efforts to define technical and commercial specifications for neutral host infrastructure – notably for multi-carrier outdoor deployments, covering spectrum, architectures, frameworks, interoperability, interconnects; with support from the Small Cell Forum (SCF) – have been picked up in Germany, Spain and Italy. He suggested some kind of international attention. “The US market is looking to the UK for these proof points,” he said at the close.
Between times, the trio skipped around these topics in discussion of such a ‘blueprint’ for neutral-host rollouts (the session title was about ‘building the blueprint’). There were a couple of interesting asides, almost, about shifting policy and regulation in the UK – where central government has pulled future funding for the Shared Rural Network (SRN) project, putting pressure on UK operators to support it as a common endeavour by themselves.
The fact operators are already busy with UK policy on “high-risk vendor removal” has them in a bind, he said. “[The process is] consuming that precious operator cap/ex and industry talent.” Which makes the whole blueprint shtick even more important – for quick and easy (quicker and easier) collaboration about new 5G NR small-cell densification. Meanwhile, UK regulator Ofcom is taking a closer look at how to review and rank outdoor densification requirements and projects.
“In recent months, Ofcom has started to talk about measures and maps… not just [to understand] predicted coverage but the actual customer experience,” he said. He added: “Moving forward, we expect more from Ofcom – new funding, new teeth perhaps, and a tighter definition of what good coverage actually looks like beyond the kind of 2Mbps downlink throughput that was really available back in 1990s and 2000s with 3G.”
The Oxford and Worthing deployments are interesting enough. The former combines all three parties: IONX brings operator interconnects, private spectrum, and test and assurance capabilities; Signify contributes smart luminaires that double as mobile infrastructure, plus the key relationship with the local council; and Cornerstone provides the commercial knowhow and backwards integration with the UK mobile industry.
Dickinson at Signify said: “Signify produces these luminaires with integrated connectivity, so we can take a fairly modest fiber footprint in a city – and Oxford is a great example – and augment that with luminaire-based connectivity solutions to make sure small cells can go into [town] planners’ optimal locations, without having to orientate those radio plans around a private grid. So… this new model – the new blueprint – is a very different proposition.
“Ninety-nine percent of small cells… are monolithic. The radio is not designed to be shared between operators. They are deployed for single operators, and they have single transmission solutions, which are only for the purpose of that small cell. That really limits the proposition for a local authority. Local authorities quite rightly expect infrastructure deployed on these lampposts to be shared, and this offers a [means to do that].”
As well, it offers a way for local authorities to multiply applications and value. He went on: “Most local authorities are looking to use the connectivity for CCTV networks, public Wi-Fi. At the moment none of [it]… is used outside of those few use cases. Not to undermine the good work to get to this point, but this offers a new blueprint not only for more small cells but also for enabling cities to have much better value propositions from neutral hosts.”
Oxford is a showcase, then, for small cells on smart lighting for dense urban coverage. Worthing, meanwhile, is a beachfront pilot showing private 5G for public service needs and shared infrastructure for public mobile usage, supporting seasonal spikes in traffic demand. Ballard explained: “It is a typical seafront location – there’s one man with his dog in the rain, and a firework display for 20,000 people; and the beach is covered when the sun comes out.”
He went on: “We got grant funding, and worked with the council to install a private 5G network. It wanted CCTV coverage and all that stuff. But on the back of that, we put in a 4G neutral-host network, and we have been proving that down there – working with [Cornerstone] to take it from a concept to a fully commercial deployment. The council is very happy. We’ve got plans to put multi operators down there. It is a stepping stone… to roll out at mass scale.”
So, decent results, work to do – the message goes. In the end, the trio called for deeper alignment among MNOs, neutral hosts, and local authorities to drive standards and specifications into real deployments. Dickinson reflected: “A big challenge is for operators to shift away from a business-as-usual model… to a new world of neutral-host outdoor small cells. What would really help move things forward is real backing from deployment teams within operators.”
Hayes responded: “To live the standards, and not just write them?” And Dickonson said: “Exactly. It is a challenge, and we all need to work together to make sure we take those first steps.”
