The last few years have seen a flurry of legislative activity intended to streamline the deployment of small cells (small wireless). More than a dozen states have passed some type of legislation to facilitate the placement of small cells. Minnesota is one of those states. Legislation effective May 2017 created a framework for the placement (“collocation”) of small wireless facilities on support structures owned by local government units (i.e. lamp posts, traffic lights, etc.). The legislation addressed areas such as; consolidated application requirements, approval timelines, limitation of fees, and zoning and height requirements. Additionally, the city of Minneapolis has passed its own ordinances aimed at streamlining the permitting for, and the placement of, small wireless facilities which was very similar to the state legislation.
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print installed more than 800 new Distributed Antenna System (DAS) antennas inside US Bank Stadium. Additionally, hundreds of Sprint “Magic Boxes,” which they herald as the world’s first wireless small cells, were provided to local businesses to boost indoor data speeds. They also installed small cells on lamp posts and street lights as a way to add more capacity throughout the city. For its part, Verizon has added 24 new cell sites and more than 200 small cell sites to increase the density of its network. Verizon even added hand-rail and drink-rail antennas in order to provide greater coverage. And, it hid, in plain sight, 230+ small cells designed to blend into the urban landscape in places like street lights, traffic signals and utility poles.
T-Mobile has deployed 120 small cells which doubled its LTE spectrum in the area so customers with capable devices could more than double their previous download speeds. Throughout the city, stadium and surrounding venues those small cells will provide additional coverage and speed inside buildings and other places that can be difficult for typical towers to reach. T-Mobile also boosted upload speeds inside U.S. Bank Stadium by deploying Centralized Radio Access Network (C-RAN) technology. C-RAN can increase upload speeds by as much as 40% in high traffic situations and has the added benefit of helping extend smartphone battery life per the company’s released information.
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T&T has upgraded its DAS inside the stadium with 800 antennas throughout the venue. Besides upgrading the network in and around downtown Minneapolis, they also made significant upgrades to the DAS at the Big Game host stadium in downtown Minneapolis. The DAS at the stadium is future-ready. They have overloaded the stadium with wireless capacity and boosted LTE capacity by more than 150% compared to last year. With more than 800 antennas, the network inside the stadium alone could provide coverage to the entire city of Minneapolis.
As we keep our sights on the future for our clients, small cell deployment legislation is one of the many things we are tracking. Stay tuned to Inteserra!
