One Smart Antenna For All
Sharing Could Give Companies Bigger Piece Of Revenue Pie
By Deborah Méndez-Wilson
October 15, 2001
Wireless Week
One of the biggest revenue producers for companies that own and manage communications towers is collocation.
The practice enables numerous wireless phone companies to affix their antennas on the same tower without having to invest in the construction and maintenance of such sites. With few exceptions–most notably Sprint PCS, which still owns Sprint Sites USA–most wireless network operators have sold off their tower assets and now share tower space with competitors.
Major tower companies own and maintain tens of thousands of towers around the country and even around the globe, making collocation a profitable prospect. Tower sharing is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years, but the practice poses some unique challenges. That's why some tower companies are looking seriously at antenna sharing as a solution that will drive revenue and solve some previous problems.
Up to now everybody looked at the antenna as a constraint. Now, the antenna actually provides better performance.
One problem with traditional tower sharing is that loading towers with too many antennas can compromise the stability of the structure. Another problem is many communities oppose the look of antenna-laden towers. Critics contend they pose health hazards and have been lobbying against their existence in local communities for years. For these and other reasons tower companies and wireless network operators have tried to improve the appearance of communications towers by making them look like palm trees, church steeples or flagpoles. They've also looked at the concept of antenna sharing.
Experts say antenna sharing is a win-win-win solution for wireless carriers, tower companies and the general public. Carriers don't have to invest millions in tower infrastructure. Tower companies can generate collocation revenue from existing towers by adding more carriers, but they don't need to add more antennas. Finally, the public benefits because tower companies don't have to build as many towers or overload existing ones. The only friction over antenna sharing seems to be coming from antenna developers themselves, with each claiming to bring the greatest value to carriers and tower companies.
With wireless penetration increasing in the United States, analysts expect the collocation trend to accelerate. "By collocating on existing towers, carriers can speed up their time to deployment and eliminate [construction] costs," says wireless analyst Frank Viquez of the technology research firm Allied Business Intelligence of Oyster Bay, N.Y.
Last summer, Viquez predicted that collocation would rise at a compound average annual growth rate of 32 percent through 2005, a forecast he still stands by.
Along with that, of course, will come heated competition to bring smarter antenna-sharing solutions to market. In recent years, solutions promising to improve network coverage and capacity have hit the market. Two companies in particular claim to have smart antenna solutions that promise to solve several constraints faced by tower companies and network operators. Both solutions are compatible with all wireless air-interface standards, including CDMA and GSM.
Recently, Metawave Communications Corp., based in Redmond, Wash., announced a smart antenna sharing solution called SmartShare. The new phased-array antenna allows several wireless carriers to share a single antenna. It also lets each carrier determine how to optimize coverage regardless of the characteristics of a particular cell site.
CEO Bob Hunsberger says Meta-wave's antenna-sharing solution features "personality cards" that actually enable network engineers to change the antenna's pattern to suit a particular carrier's coverage needs. "That's why this is such a breakthrough in the industry. Up to now everybody has looked at the antenna as a constraint. It's fixed. It's a piece of sheet metal. Now, the antenna actually becomes a variable–a variable that gives better performance," he says.
One of Metawave's major competitors, the Atlanta-based CoLocation Technologies LLC, offers a patented solution called SpectraShare.
Brad Brown, the company's director of product development, says CLT employs a normal PCS antenna that requires all of the users to point the same direction with the same up-and-down and side-to-side capabilities. However, the solution isolates each carrier's signal from the others. "We give added performance and added isolation without physically separating the antennas," he says.
Brown says the industry standard for space between antennas on towers previously was 15 feet. With wireless demand growing, however, he says pressure is building to space the antennas even closer, which makes antenna-sharing solutions even more compelling. However, latecomers who join a group of carriers already sharing a set of antennas usually get the short shrift, with their antennas placed at a lower level. "The third or fourth guy down is probably in the trees and their coverage is not as good. Everybody wants to be at the top. With our technology, everybody is at the top," Brown says.
Tower companies for years have viewed the space on their sites as prime real estate. Brown, Hunsberger and others say they and wireless carriers have nothing to lose and everything to gain by further adopting antenna-sharing technologies.
"Anytime they can increase their revenue stream with minimal capital investment–they are hungry for that," Brown says.
CLT is in the process of securing venture capital to expand its offerings and has talked to all of the major tower companies. However, for competitive reasons, Brown would not disclose any agreements with tower companies.
For its part, Metawave says it already has sold its idea to a major, as-yet-unnamed tower company that plans to deploy it. A formal announcement is expected in the coming weeks. A letter of intent calls for Metawave to develop the hardware and software for SmartShare. Testing of the antenna-sharing solution is expected to begin early next year with commercial availability of the product planned for next summer.
Hunsberger says tower companies have at least one powerful incentive to accept antenna sharing. He says such solutions don't take away their collocation abilities but actually multiply them. "They've got this real estate. If they can put something up there that gives them the ability to have more people use that asset, then that's going to be a real plus for them," he says.
And it will be a big plus for antenna developers.
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