Encouraging Small Cell Colocation: It’s still the exception, but possible!

In the densest urban footprints, you’ll find small cells mounted to multiple poles, sometimes just feet from one other. Often, there’s space on these poles to accommodate a second tenant, so why isn’t there more colocation?  As carrier focus shifts to deploying C-Band on macro sites, small cells have fallen out of focus in 2022. However, the industry expectation is that the number of small cell deployments will come roaring back in the next few years. It will become increasingly important to facilitate colocation as the number of viable poles decrease. The pros of colocation are strong: fewer objects in the Right of Way (ROW) and reduced deployment costs, faster deployment times. But the challenges are real: carrier interference concerns, sharing metered power, facilitating maintenance windows. This panel focuses on a case study demonstrating the technical, jurisdictional, and strategic solutions around small cell colocation, and what we can do to make it the industry norm.