Orange and Cellnex Telecom, in conjunction with the city of Barcelona, are rolling out the first network of 4G Small Cells in Barcelona

Orange and Cellnex Telecom, in conjunction with the city of Barcelona, are rolling out the first network of 4G Small Cells in Barcelona

• • • This is a pioneering project in Europe, whose aim is to improve mobile phone service experience for users
    • The project, also driven by the Municipal I.T. Institute of the City of Barcelona, involves rolling out 4G Small Cells in the city’s urban fixtures
    • It will also make it possible to validate the relational model between mobile operators, the network infrastructure manager Cellnex Telecom and the City Council with a view to future roll-outs

Barcelona, 19 February 2016. – Cellnex Telecom, in conjunction with Orange and with the support of Barcelona City Council, are deploying a network of 4G Small Cells connected with fibre optics and supported in urban fixtures in the city. The main objective is to improve mobile phone service experience for users in crowded areas such as the Plaça de Catalunya square and the surrounding area, in the heart of the city. This network will increase the capacity for concurrent connections and will provide navigation speeds of 150 Mbps following the installation of advanced 4G Ericsson technology equipment.
The project has been unveiled just days before the start of the Mobile World Congress and will provide coverage around Plaça de Catalunya with 4G Small Cell devices in various parts of the square, installed on lamp posts and could be rolled out subsequently to other areas of interest.
This network will ensure optimal experience for mobile phone use, even when there is a high concentration of users.
This first roll-out of 4G Small Cells in Barcelona will also make it possible to identify the best urban fixtures on which to install small-scale base stations while seeking to achieve rational and orderly use of urban infrastructure so that rolling out devices to densify mobile networks can be planned in future in an orderly manner, with the least possible impact on the urban environment.
Furthermore, this initiative, which is a pioneer in Europe, will make it possible to conceptualise the relational model between mobile operators, in this case Orange, the network infrastructure manager – Cellnex Telecom – and the City Council to expedite future deployments in the city of Barcelona.

About Orange
Orange, which in 2013 became the first operator to provide 4G service in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, is leading the development of 4G services in Spain and had more than 5,100,000 customers at the end of last year, 637,000 more than the previous quarter. Orange’s 4G coverage reached 85% of Spain’s population by the end of 2015, including all provincial capitals. 4G data traffic carried by Orange mobile networks already exceeds the sum of traffic from other mobile technologies (2G and 3G). This milestone was achieved for the first time in late 2015 and was consolidated in early 2016.
These good results were achieved thanks to a differential roll-out strategy, committed not only to spreading LTE technology throughout the whole country, but also to achieving the highest quality connectivity in the towns and cities covered.

About Cellnex Telecom
Cellnex Telecom is one of Europe’s main independent operators of wireless telecommunications broadcasting infrastructures.
It offers sites to rent for telecommunications operators and provides the most advanced audiovisual services to national, regional and local broadcasters.
Over the past four years, Cellnex Telecom has made a firm commitment to developing a network of over 15,000 sites and has enjoyed strong growth in the mobile phone towers area through agreements with operators like Telefónica and Yoigo in Spain, the purchase of the Italian company TowerCo in 2014, and the recent acquisition of 7,400 towers in Italy following the agreement with WIND to gain control of Galata.
It also develops solutions in the “smart city” projects field and has rolled out a smart communications network making it possible to connect objects and develop a strong ecosystem for the Internet of Things (IoT) in Spain.
Cellnex Telecom also plays a key role in rolling out telecommunications networks for security and emergency forces.