Why T-Mobile US Hasn't Made a Big Deal of "Small Cells"

Weakness sometimes can become strength, in the mobile business as in any other endeavor.

T-Mobile US now makes the argument that its historic need to build a denser network, because of the higher frequencies of its spectrum, now has become an advantage, because the T-Mobile US network already is more dense than would otherwise have been the case.

That perspective also explains why T-Mobile US is not in the forefront of talk about using small cells to create a more-dense network.

The use of small cells has capital investment implications.

In the traditional macrocell environment, shrinking cell radius by 50 percent quadruples the number of cells required to cover the same surface area.

The same principles apply when making existing macrocell areas more dense: a vast expansion of cell sites would be required to completely redesign a former macrocell area using microcells only.

That is one reason why small cell deployments are overlays. That approach economizes on capital investment requirements.

That same logic also explains why firms such as Comcast have activate huge networks of what are essentially very small cells, based on the deployment of consumer high speed access routers.