Outstanding cellular coverage for my building

Small Cell Forum (SCF) has recently published a comprehensive guide to assist building owners and tenants in solving the issues of poor and sub-standard cellular connectivity on their premises. Options for Indoor Cellular is available as a six page user-friendly brochure for property owners and landlords, or a document that helps to understand the different offerings available for IT departments.

Poor quality indoor wireless coverage is a major problem in all types of buildings, whether caused by building materials and techniques, which can have the side effect of blocking mobile signals, or geographical location. Cellular is complementary to other technologies, such as Wi-Fi, and offers connectivity that is more secure and reliable for a wide range of applications.

SCF’s guide provides a clear and concise overview of the range of options available to help ensure high-quality and secure connectivity. It includes comprehensive case studies of deployments around the world at sites as diverse as hospitals, remote oil and gas plants, ports, stadia and corporate headquarters.

Recent years have seen dramatic improvements in efficiency and productivity afforded by adopting new mobile-first processes, but these can make significant demands on available network, requiring fast data rates combined with high quality of service. It is imperative that these demands are able to be supported indoors, where at least 75% of enterprise data traffic is generated.

Issues such as poor or lack of signal in apartments, offices, venues, hotels and conference centres can cause considerable frustration, and research has shown that residential and enterprise tenants are increasingly inclined to avoid properties with poor indoor coverage. This in turn reduces yields and increases churn for landlords. Despite a clear need, to date it has been difficult for organizations to know what they can do to improve mobile signal on their premises.

“Mobile devices have become essential assets in day-to-day life and drivers for communication and productivity in the workplace – especially during these COVID-19 times. The need has never been greater for quality, high speed, reliable mobile coverage inside residential, commercial and mixed-use premises, irrespective of the environmental and geographic constraints,” said Dr. Prabhakar Chitrapu, Chair of Small Cell Forum. “For the wide range of deployment environments, from single shops and medium-sized offices, to large enterprises and industries, or very large stadiums and shopping malls, we have put together this guide to clearly lay out in detail the solutions which are available today that can dramatically improve the indoor cellular experience. We hope this document will be a go-to guide for various stakeholders, such as building owners and IT personnel.”