About Regulatory and Policy Aspects of Small Cells

Small cells create several opportunities to meet the objectives that regulators set out to achieve. Some of these are as follows:

• Improved access: Small cells provide a cost effective means of improving consumer access to mobile services. They improve coverage in hard-to-reach indoor environments, without the need to deploy large numbers of outdoor base stations. They deliver truly broadband mobile services within existing spectrum. In rural and remote areas, Small cells allow customers to access services which would otherwise be hard for operators to serve economically, thereby promoting inclusion, reducing the digital divide and expanding opportunities for remote communities to be fully connected.

• Cost effective: In urban areas, small cells allow for cost-effective Deployments which provide additional capacity and coverage. Equipment Costs are generally lower than for macro base station sites and number of Sites can be optimized (network optimization services) to provide additional capacity in locations where it is Most needed. It is therefore necessary for administrations and local Authorities to revise and streamline the administrative requirements to fully realize these cost benefits.

• Visually unobtrusive: In public spaces, the impact on the environment of small cells is minimized due to their relatively small and unobtrusive form factor. Their visual impact on the surroundings can be further minimized as they can be mounted on existing lampposts, walls, etc., rather than requiring dedicated masts or unsightly supporting structures. It is therefore important that local planning laws take these aspects into account and are not unduly restrictive to the deployment of small cells in public spaces.

• Spectrum efficiency: Indoor small cells can reuse existing mobile operator spectrum for operation, including both currently unused frequencies and frequencies already used by outdoor sites. More generally, small cells open up the use of higher frequencies whose range might be excessively limited for wide area operation, increasing the overall use of available spectrum. They can also operate in lower frequency bands, reducing their transmit power accordingly to avoid harmful interference. To fully realize these efficiency in urban scenarios, the handover and/or re-selection parameters need to be optimized for users of the small cells to allow inter-technology handover and re-selection (3G-4G) and indoor-outdoor handover (between small cells and macro layer).

• Innovation and opportunity: By reducing the deployment and operating cost of mobile broadband services, small cells increase the value of services for both consumers and service providers. Most significantly, they make a broadband connection more attractive to consumers by easily enabling the use of an operator-compatible mobile device in the home. This means that the consumer does not have to think about what device or what network to use when transitioning to or from a home environment. Small cells also increase the range of service models available to operators, encouraging competition and efficiency and enable newer technologies to be delivered to customers more quickly. Importantly too, small cells provide a platform for delivering new applications and services to existing devices with attractive tariffs. Such new applications could include location-based and other tailored services, which can be offered to customers subject to the usual privacy and opt-in requirements.

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