City of Tampa
Small Cell Case Study
OVERVIEW
Small cell deployments across the globe increased by 43% last year to meet the rising need of both consumer data and voice services. In total, 1.7 million small cell units shipped in 2016. With this demand, a new player in small cell has emerged in the Citizens Broadband Radio System (CBRS). CBRS uses TD-LTE to provide a wireless voice and data service at the 3.5GHz spectrum. However, the spectrum is not sold to operators in large blocks covering wide geographic areas, nor is it a completely unlicensed free-for-all, such as Wi-Fi. Instead, its use is individually requested and assigned on a case-by-case basis. Then, where it is no longer required, it is returned for use by others. The nature of the technology behind CBRS is low range, but it has powerful low latency signal propagation. Due to this, it is most effectively utilized in small cell urban deployments.