Shared spectrum combined with small cell technology will open up every major enterprise to a new era of indoor cellular performance. Will there also be an opportunity for disruption of the mobile service provider business?
Shared spectrum will allow enterprises to build their own on-premises 5G networks, including options for unlicensed or lightly-licensed or quality-assured modes.
The United States will pioneer this with Citizens Broadband Radio Service and Rethink forecasts that by 2025, shared spectrum small cells will account for 48 percent of total new installations.
source: Rethink Research
CBRS will represent two thirds of those installations and the bulk of those will be within enterprises, running in both 5G and 4G, according to Rethink Technology Research.
Rethink researchers believe there could be as many as 3.7 million base stations using shared spectrum installed globally by 2025.
Licensed-band small cells in enterprise and outdoor markets will reach peak roll-out levels in 2019 because of major densification programs by Sprint, AT&T and Verizon, but will decline between that year and 2022 as the operators shift their focus to 5G, first in the macro layer and later in small cells.
New types of operators, including neutral hosts, cloud providers and enterprise system integration firms will be able to harness shared spectrum and small cells to deploy their own indoor networks.
Full displacement seems unlikely, since mobility needs still will be necessary, for phone users.
But indoor 5G networks might also be substitutes for Wi-Fi networks. In that case, private 5G traffic that has to leave the premises might first be aggregated, and might use a fixed network for access.
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