AT&T May Require 1,500 to 3,000 New Macrosites Per Year

May 21, 2014

Network Improvements Do Not Negate the Need for Towers

By Don Bishop

AT&T Services’ president of network operations, Bill Smith, spoke to an audience at the Wireless Infrastructure Show in Orlando, Florida, on Wednesday. In introducing Smith, PCIA President and CEO Jonathan Adelstein said Smith is responsible for AT&T’s network health. He manages 100,000 employees and controls a checkbook of $20 billion. “This makes him a popular guy as he walks the halls this morning,” Adelstein quipped.

Smith first addressed the current news that AT&T is buying Direct TV for $48.5 billion. He said the motivation to put the two companies together has to do with more and more people watching content on mobile devices. “No one should be concerned it is a left turn by AT&T with respect to investment in its network,” he said.

The AT&T executive went on to detail how the use of AT&T’s wireless network is growing rapidly. He said network traffic in the vicinity of the Superbowl was a record for the event, yet the Coachilla Music Festival’s network traffic was 30 percent higher than the Superbowl’s and twice that of the festival last year. He said the Kentucky Derby set a record for AT&T network traffic and was 20 percent higher than Coachilla’s. “We don’t see any end in sight to this trend,” he said.

Smith said wireless networks do not stand alone, they work hand in hand with wired networks. In that context, AT&T’s initiative to transform its legacy TDM wired infrastructure into an all-IP network is continuing apace. Called Velocity IP, the initiative was announced a couple of years ago, Smith said, “and we are well underway toward completion. We can see the finish line from this first phase.”

Another step for AT&T is is expanding LTE. “We are at 280 million pops and committed to 380 million by the end of the year,” Smith said. “We probably will reach that this summer.”

Next for AT&T is wireless network densification, which is putting more cell site capacity in place, whether it takes the form of macrosites, small cells or DAS. “Spectrum is a scarce resource,” he said. “T there are issues about getting more capacity and spectrum in play. Right now, it’s about making the most use of what you have.” In that regard, Smith said AT&T would be building new macrosites. “We plan 1,500 to 3,000 macro sites per year for the foreseeable future. Your organization helps us get through the permitting barriers,” he said of PCIA’s efforts.

Smith said he is particularly proud of what AT&T has done with DAS and small cell development. “We set up an organization dedicated to getting into venues, particularly sporting arenas,” he said. “Small cells are important to use as a solution, although the use of small cells is more of a rifle-shot technique for use in concentrated areas with special needs, such as malls and office buildings. Small cells are good solutions for that.”

AT&T’s network operations chief said the use of tower-mounted radios is another source of pride. “We take the radio up to the top of the tower instead of placing it at the bottom, and it gains us 3dB on the transmit and receive,” Smith said.

He said that for some new cell site construction. AT&T premanufactures cell sites in various sizes and installs the equipment inside in a controlled environment. AT&T uses state-of-the-art heating and cooling that is environmentally safe, and uses backup generators.”

Smith said carrier aggregation is the single most important thing for network performance. “We have to put different bands of spectrum together,” he said. “Carrier aggregation lets us do that to deliver the performance our customers want.

He said the use of small cells is key to AT&T’s network program. “They’re efficient,” Smith said. “Four small cells within a macro cell area can boost the total capacity of that area by 50 to 60 percent. That’s valuable for us as we deal with spots of capacity needs. We have a tool that will pinpoint where we need small cell capacity to offload form the macro network.”

AT&T has made great strides with self-optimizing networks (SONs), Smith said. He explained that, historically, it has taken engineers six to 12 months to optimize the network. Meanwhile, the needs of networks change moment to moment with people entering high-rise buildings in the morning and at lunch and after work they exit to the streets. “Historically, we couldn’t reoptimize that quickly,” he said. “A self-optimizing network makes a half-million optimizations a day in our network, real time, in 15-minute increments. That’s a vast improvement in network performance.”

SON 2.0 performs other tasks such as dynamic interference management, Smith said. It can change the tilt of antennas to mitigate interference with a mass event handling tool.

For additional network performance improvement, AT&T is using network virtualization, also known as Domain 2.0 and the user-defined network cloud. It shifts from the use of special-purpose components to using virtual components on white-box software. “There are dozens of special-purpose equipment on our network, whether wired or wireline,” Smith said. “It doesn’t have to be that way. It’s possible to take the functionality and develop a software capability and then run it on a white box or a non-specialized piece of equipment. We expect that will provide cost savings.”

Taking all these steps together doesn’t mean AT&T builds fewer towers, Smith said, but they improve the network efficiency and allow an overall savings for the company’s capital program. “Getting the cost savings from retiring the legacy network helps to make innovation for customers affordable,” he said. “Technology is inexorable. It can be managed but not controlled.”