A few days ago, Informa Telecoms & Media (News - Alert) issued its latest quarterly small-cell market status report. This report includes the results of a survey indicating that 98 percent of mobile operator respondents believe that small cells are essential for the future of its networks.


While important progress is being made toward integrating small cells and public Wi-Fi, the report highlights significant new technological progress with operators announcing major public access deployments and the first dual-mode LTE (News - Alert)/3G devices.

Including nine of the top 10 operators by revenue globally, there are now 46 small-cell deployments by operators. A case study of a groundbreaking new '3G hotspot' service from Vodafone (News - Alert) Greece is also included in the report. Vodafone Greece provides its customers with a free data service when connected to certain public access small cells in retail locations.

Progress made by Virgin Media (News - Alert) has also been evaluated in the report. In several UK cities, Virgin Media won a deal to roll out metro cells, which will initially support only Wi-Fi but could support cellular in the future. Developments from NTT DoCoMo (News - Alert) and AT&T are also assessed and addressed in the report.

This month, while NTT DoCoMo will be launching the world's first dual-mode LTE/3G femtocell, AT&T, according to its announcement, will start rolling out 40K public access small cells in Q1 of 2013. Verizon and Sprint are expected to follow imminently.

Showing that technology is being extended to all customers, not just those on higher tariffs, the report noted that SFR, which has aggressively rolled out free femtocells to its customers, is extending the offer to its low-cost 'Red' brand. The report also looks at the progress that has been made in integrating Wi-Fi hotspots and small cells.

To improve quality of service, lower costs and simplify deployment, the Small Cell Forum and Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) announced that it will work together to intelligently integrate small cells and Wi-Fi.

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Edited by Brooke Neuman