By Jeffrey Yorke
On April 1 this year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported nearly 8.5 million people living in New York City. And that didn’t count the influx of folks from New Jersey and Connecticut who commute to work in the Big Apple each day. So figure that’s a lot of cell phones, a lot of communications bouncing tower-to-tower.
During the Wednesday “Executive Roundtable on the Mobile Network Infrastructure Evolution,” moderator Berge Ayvazian of Wireless 20/20 asked: “The carriers were very effective in the past in bringing down the cost of building networks, but can they do the same with small cell?”
The question prompted Gray Beards Consulting, LCC communications expert Jake MacLeod to discuss how densifying has spawned the need for more small cell systems throughout Gotham’s five boroughs. It’s due simply to space constrictions to towers and overall need, he told the audience.
Towerstream’s Jeff Thompson pointed out the trouble is that “installation dollars are not coming down.” Couple that with zoning hurdles, and no wonder AT&T was surprised by the four-to-eight times higher cost that small cell projects typically cost, forcing it and other carriers to trim back build-out plans. For now, the industry will have to work out the bugs – namely the high cost of creating small networks, theorized Thompson.
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