Was everyone too quick to jump on the bandwagon claiming massive growth of small cells? Verizon’s (News - Alert) chief technology officer has interjected a small amount of pessimism to the otherwise fervid campaign toward small cells in solving the bandwidth problems caused by an influx of mobile connectivity.


Tony Melone, the Verizon CTO, said recently during an investor conference that small cells allow telecoms to buy time, essentially, and that only limited scale deployments would be feasible for small cells, according to this Small Cells World Summit report.

Similarly, he said VoIP technology in the mobile environment still presents issues that will need some careful consideration.

His tepid response to the small cell development that is expected to boom over the next few years does not mirror that of others in the telecom industry. Many believe that small cells, such as picocells and femtocells, will vastly outgrow macro-cell development. Many industry administrators are looking to small cells to provide the necessary coverage in office buildings and urban areas where usage is particularly high.

Melone’s beef with the clamoring for small cells is that while it addresses various issues that can be relieved by cell splitting, the small cells do not address the spectrum issues, which are also very important.

Also not finding particular favor with the Verizon CTO is WiFi offload and LTE (News - Alert). He said the company would not be in any hurry to go to the voice over long-term evolution (VoLTE) platform, which is also marketed as 4GLTE.

The company is, however, offering the technology on its network for testing purposes, but customers aren’t being pushed in that direction. This stance differs from other telecoms that are moving their customers from the legacy system to VoLTE. Melone believes that LTE is not a suitable wireline replacement and that it wouldn’t offer the consumers more value for broadband usage.

As for Wi-Fi, he said he sees value in the home and venues where large numbers of people gather for short periods, but Wi-Fi offload presents security issues, shows a general lack of support or advancement and will not suit the company’s ability to support customer needs.

It’s expected that by 2013, mobile data traffic will surpass two terabytes per month. Data offloading is expected to get a helping hand from small cell technology. Femtocells (News - Alert) that use the 3G standards have no problem working with macrocells, which makes them a viable candidate. Another advantage to using this variety of small cells is that it uses less energy.

While the big telecoms like Verizon might not be as willing to tout the abilities of small cells, they’re likely to continue to be a solution sought out by more and more companies.






Edited by Stefanie Mosca