In an earlier article, TowerXchange explored the growth opportunities the in-building market presents for neutral hosts, and delved into the in-building system (IBS) model and its economics. Since then, we have seen another development; Freshwave has launched a new solution called Omni Network that delivers 4G connectivity in a single box for all the country’s mobile operators.
The UK-based towerco has worked with active equipment vendor CommScope using the latter’s ONECELL® and is rolling out the solution at different customer sites across the country still offering its managed services. Freshwave says the solution is a world-first, providing better aesthetics and reducing energy use and cabling in the buildings.
Freshwave has installed and operates in-building solutions in several hundred buildings across the UK for both private enterprise and public customers. For building owners and operators, having a multi-tenanted connectivity solution is attractive, cutting down on parallel infrastructure and better serving tenants and visitors.
The company has taken four separate small cells and combined them into a single box catering to the signals of all four UK MNOs, configured and controlled by engineers via Freshwave’s data centre.
This in turn means Omni Network needs less equipment, cabling and installation, making it faster to design and deploy. Depending on the building size, Omni Network provides up to 65%lower cost than a legacy, traditional distributed antenna system (DAS). It’s also more energy efficient, using up to 60% less energy. Each access point can provide up to 25% more coverage compared to a traditional small cell and 32% more than a low power DAS.
Simon Frumkin, Freshwave’s CEO, said: “Omni Network extends in-building mobile connectivity to a wider range of organisations than ever before thanks to our team’s technical innovation. As the only company in the UK able to offer Omni Network, we’re looking forward to the benefits it will bring to our customers across the public and private sector. We’re grateful to all the UK mobile operators for their collaboration which made Omni Network possible.”
Omni Network connects via agreed operator technical specifications and allows Freshwave to provide building owners with additional network statistics and visibility of what’s happening on the mobile network in their building. Freshwave has said its solution can be scaled to work in buildings with areas ranging from 550 sq m (6,000 sq ft) to 32,500 sq m (350,000 sq ft).
