Jennifer Fritzsche, Senior Analyst at Wells Fargo Financial said her firm has received a lot of questions as to whether the amount of small cells will actually be in the “millions” as some predict (like CCI).

“To put the starting point in perspective based on iGR’s research,” Fritzsche said “there are roughly 60K standalone dedicated outside cell sites in the U.S. as of YE 2016. CCI defines this amount as 200K (but we assume this includes rooftop sites, etc…thus apples and oranges with iGR’s figure).”  Based on what VZ has told them about the Boston market, Fritzsche said, “you can almost reverse engineer it.”

“Recall, during the press junket that the CEO of VZ and CEO of Corning held in April, VZ announced it plans to add 9K small cells in Boston alone…this is from ONE carrier,” she wrote in a client report. Wikipedia ranks Boston as 22nd in size of U.S. metro cities and is considered a fairly concentrated market.

“So as you do this math, I am not sure I think that ‘million’ number of small cells should be considered such a moon shot.  Houston….maybe you DO NOT have a problem, after all!” Fritzsche said.