Will Verizon's Small Cell Network Be as Big as the Whole U.S. Cell Site Base?

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam says it will deploy 8,000 to 10,000 small cells in Boston, a massive expansion.

To put those Boston small cells into perspective, there were about 300,000 cell sites total, in the U.S. market, in 2016, and about 150,000 towers.

If Verizon places a similar number of new small cells in 32 "NFL cities," that might imply that Verizon alone will put into place 256,000 to 320,000 new small cells. At the higher end, that is equal to the entire base of U.S. cell sites. Multiply by four and you have some idea of the density of the new small cell networks to support 5G operations.

To be sure, Verizon is unlikely to deploy that densely in its "out of region" fixed network footprint. That density of small cells will make more sense where Verizon already operates fixed networks.

On the other hand, the ability to leverage the 5G mobile network infrastructure to support fixed access operations out of region, though not a high priority, will someday become a possibility for the first time, most likely to support business customers.

That massive deployment of new cell sites explains why the One Fiber deployment of transport fiber is so important.

Those 8,000 to 10,000 cell sites all will need gigabit per second backhaul. The Verizon One Fiber optical infrastructure upgrade in Boston involves a $300 million investment in new fiber transport over six years.

Separately, he says Verizon will purchase up to 12.4 million miles of optical fiber from Corning each year beginning in 2018 through 2020. The minimum purchase commitment is $1.05 billion, Verizon said.

source: SNL Kagan