Public Safety 700 MHz Spectrum likely to Require new Antenna and Control Infrastructure
The wireless tower industry is expecting this investment to continue and according to James Taiclet Jr, the CEO of American Tower Corporation, is set to involve the large, macro cell sites:
“…further 4G equipment installations will still be largely on macro towers.”
Looking forwards, the new 700 MHz spectrum committed for the public safety build out is likely to require new antenna and control infrastructure being placed onto American Tower’s cell sites and this should support “healthy levels of growth” for the domestic market. Taiclet does not expect the 5G network standard to be formalised until 2019 and almost all development over the next three years will be 4G LTE equipment. American Towers is expecting mobile data use will grow at an annualised growth rate of between 30% to 40% and modern, high performance LTE networks are necessary to carry this level of data.
American Tower Corporation operate many of the America’s cell towers and have been a beneficiary of the three largest carriers’ work to densify their network through building new wide area macro sites as well as using small cells, especially in urban environments.