Much is said about the huge advances in wireless and mobile phone technologies these days - 3g and LTE offer data rates that were unimaginable when the mobile industry first started. This data rate will bring huge advances in things like mobile banking, education, health and even in "real time" reporting of natural (and man made) disasters.
The advances in electronics in base stations and in antenna science are truly daunting - yet as we advance more and more along the "hi tech" aspects why are only a few of us questioning elements of network builds such as:
1. Why are we using basically the same towers as those designed decades ago and why are we building them in the same way?
2. Why is renewable power sources such as solar and wind become the last and not first choice to power sites? - its proven now that properly engineered sites can run very well on these!!
3. Why are so many sites, particularly in urban areas (rooftop and tower) basically pretty ugly structures?
There are many, many great things happening with wireless but the passive infrastructure is being left behind - and its ironic that this is the area that can dramatically reduce the operating costs of a network by reduced footprint = reduced real estate costs and elimination of power bills?
Operators need to revisit passive infrastructure to reduce operating costs so they can do things like keep their tarrifs lower than their competitors and increase network proffitability, particularly in rural areas.
By the way - this is the first in my blogging experience - every few weeks I hope to provide insight or question elements of the telco world - particularly the bits of it that relate to wireless.
