Three UK's 5G C-RAN Infrastructure in Birmingham, UK

The Wireless Infrastructure Group (WIG), recently announced the launch of a significant new infrastructure project set to transform mobile connectivity across Birmingham. They have deployed their own fibre backbone across the city and partnered with Birmingham City Council to connect up tens of thousands of streetscape assets for mobile infrastructure. An article highlighted:

WIG’s neutral host network infrastructure can support all mobile networks and has been anchored by Three UK running 5G services and creating the UK’s first large-scale 5G centralised radio access network (C-RAN) to enable super-fast speeds for all Three’s customers.

WIG’s network will also play a key role in supporting the vital testing of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) on Birmingham’s streets. WIG has developed this complex project in its role as lead communications infrastructure partner to Midlands Future Mobility – the organisation responsible for the UK’s largest real world test bed for CAVs.

Project Highlights:

• Birmingham-wide 5G C-RAN network utilising WIG-owned fibre back-bone enabling ultra-low latency capability with fibre fronthaul.
• Contiguous high speed and high capacity 4G and 5G services from Birmingham International Airport through to the city centre.
• Future-proof, multi-operator, multi-technology architecture that will support 5G in standalone and non-standalone modes.
• Long-term agreement for WIG and its customers to utilise tens of thousands of assets owned by Birmingham City Council.
• Deployment of long-term sustainable infrastructure solutions, supporting small cells and making use of existing street furniture.
• Three UK customers already benefitting from 4G and 5G delivered by the infrastructure with service throughput in excess 1Gb/s. Three’s initial deployment area includes city centre capacity hot spots together with contiguous high speed and high-capacity services across 20kms of the busiest parts of the Midlands Future Mobility testbed route.

A short case study on this is available here.

In a recent video, embedded below, Dr. Peter Clarke highlighted 'Blazing Three UK 5G from Brand New Small Cell Poles of Wonder in Birmingham'. The video embedded below feature Commscope VVSSP-360S-F antennas, Commscope cabinets and Ericsson Radios.

For more details also checkout Peter's LinkedIn post here.

Related Posts: 

• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Three UK's Gigabit 5G Poles Explained
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Temporary masts for festivals, events, etc.
• Operator Watch Blog: UK 5G Spectrum Results Summary
• Operator Watch Blog: 2019 UK Mobile Network Developments Roundup
• Operator Watch Blog - Three UK: Bringing A True 5G Experience
• Operator Watch Blog: Average Three UK customer will use 56 GB per month by 2025
• Operator Watch Blog: Eir Ireland's Flagship Huawei 5G (and 4G) Mast Configurations
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Multi-sectorised sites and Small Cells help O2 UK handle Capacity in Busy Areas
• The 3G4G Blog - Opinion: What is "Real 5G" or "True 5G"
• The 3G4G Blog: Mobile Network Cell Tower Site Construction 

CW Seminar on DAS vs Small Cells

I mentioned about the CW seminar in my earlier post here. The event is over so here are a few takeaways from the seminar.

The good news about CW Small Cells events is that David Chambers (ThinkSmallCell) does a very comprehensive summary. For this one, its available here.

For a limited time (for non-members), the presentations from the speakers is available on CW website here.

I wanted to highlight few takeaways and stats that were quoted during the seminar as follows:

• The 5 challenges of deploying small cells: compelling event, capacity, complexity, coverage, cost
• 90 operators now offer unlimited service with voice, SMS & Data
• Due to European roaming charges having been scrapped, there is 300% growth in European roaming traffic since last year.
• Average consumption is 1.9Gbytes/month forecast to be 15.8Gbytes by 2022. Finish operator Elisa is already running at an average of 18GB/month
• Modern inbuilding systems are 2T2R with many older installation still using SISO.
• 40% of the workforce will be freelancers, temps, independent contractors and solopreneurs by 2020 (Not sure if this is UK or worldwide figure)
• 39% of millenials say they interact more with their smartphones than they do with theur significant others, parents, friends, children or co-workers
• By the end of 2017, around 14000 co-working spaces will be in operation worldwide
• 67% of people around the world use a personal device at work to some degree

I have highlighted Opencell's view on DAS vs Small Cells in the earlier post here. This Tweet below also shows the comparison points

Good comparison between DAS & Small Cells by Graham Payne of @youvegotnetwork at @cambwireless #CWSmallCell pic.twitter.com/wE8MChjPSB

— Parallel Wireless (@Parallel_tw) December 7, 2017

Bob Slorach, from Wireless Infrastructure Group (WIG), drew some clear guidelines about building size, pointing to the needs of buildings between about 50000 to 300000 sq. ft. This represents a huge unmet demand of around 2 Billion sq. ft. in the UK alone.

As can be seen in the picture above, picocells can serve smaller venues while a 5 watt small cell (microcell) with distributed RF can satisfy the 100 - 300K sq. ft. venues. For bigger venues, a higher power unit would be required. It would also justify to have a neutral host solution so the costs could be distributed and coverage is available for everyone.

Adis Omeragic, Special Projects Manager at EE, shared his side of the story. While his slides are still not on the site (they are expected to be available), I have emnedded a tweet below.

Some very clear and concise points made by Adis Omeragic of @EE regarding DAS and Small Cells at @cambwireless #CWSmallCell pic.twitter.com/wNTlmbPNol

— Parallel Wireless (@Parallel_tw) December 7, 2017

Some of the points he made were, while passive DAS may no longer be used, active DAS will be around. Only about 5% of DAS deployments in the UK have all four operators connected as of today.

According to Adis, DAS displacement is slow because of lack of roadmap alignment between macros and small cells. Small cells upgrade path is very limited. DAS allows Carrier Aggregation, Multi-technology and multi-band capability, SON features which are more common in macros, etc.

Due to the new features like 4x4 MIMO and even Massive MIMO, things may start going in favour of small cells.

One final point that was discussed in the panel was whether VoWiFi is good enough so there is no longer a need for residential or enterprise femtocells.

While the panelists agreed that VoWifi is good enough for residential, it may not be good enough for enterprises. I disagree. If the enterprise has designed their WiFi networks properly, this may not be much of an issue.

There is other issue of the lack of devices and operators support for VoWiFi. As EE pointed out, they only support it for post-paid customers, on direct contract with them. So pre-paid, MVNO and partner customers wont benefit. Also, its supported in limited number of devices.