How One Company's Small Cell Solution Is Making Universal Network Access A Reality

New Revenue Streams For Property Owners

If you're a property owner or facility manager, the opportunity is significant. Thanks to small cell tech, you can now monetize your existing assets and create new revenue streams through rental fees.

But market entry is complicated. The challenge for real estate owners lies in forging a connection and marketing their potential small cell site locations to national carriers. Carriers have an imperative to identify the appropriate billbards, buildings and other physical structures near their fiber networks.They have traditionally relied on third parties to find locations and negotiate with the owner, a costly and time-consuming process.

For property owners/managers it’s a process fraught with problems. How do you even get on a carrier’s radar? And, if you’re property is seen as a candidate for a small cell site, there’s another hurdle—navigating the negotiations and complex procurement processes intrinsic to dealing with large carriers.

There simply hasn’t been a way to connect carriers and property owners, at scale, while streamlining the monetization opportunity, until now.

The next big thing on the agenda for commercial and residential real estate? Taking advantage of the explosion in demand for cellular data.

With smartphone usage on the rise, the ubiquity of streaming media, and the expanding Internet of Things, mobile traffic is booming. According to Cisco, it's expected to grow sevenfold by 2019.

To meet this data demand, mobile carriers need real estate space. Everything from apartment roofs to shopping mall assets to billboards are becoming a hot commodity. That's because mobile carriers are densifying legacy 4G networks and preparing for the rollout of next-gen 5G networks, which depend on technology that's disrupting traditional reliance on cell towers. That technology is called small cells.

Not too dissimilar to the nodes you see on cellular towers, small cells are low-powered radio access nodes with a range of 10 meters to one to two kilometers. What differentiates them from traditional cellular nodes is that they require much less space. Small cells can be deployed easily on existing property assets, without the need for traditional tower-based real estate, offering carriers access to previously underserved and hard-to-reach locations.

Simplifying The Opportunity

Enter SmallCellSite.com, powered by Virginia-based TeleWorld Solutions, an award-winning online marketplace that makes it simple for mobile carriers and property owners to buy and sell small cell locations.

It uses interactive photos and maps, proprietary algorithms and other information, so property owners can quickly market the details of their offerings, including features and price to attract carrier interest. Carriers can browse and select the real estate assets they need—close to fiber optic resources—for ideal small cell deployment.

Instead of jumping through hoops to market and sell real estate assets for small cell placement, property owners can fast-track this lucrative new revenue stream through SmallCellSite.com’s powerful, map-based interface. With SmallCellSite.com property owners can easily showcase the details of their real estate offerings to attract operator interest.

Instead of navigating the complexities of carrier negotiations and relationships, owners can securely upload listing information, receive suggested pricing, and gain lucrative exposure to the expanding marketplace. By eliminating the middleman, SmallCellSite also ensures that property owners gain a larger share of revenue.

Carriers benefit too. They can easily search and uncover key information about property asset sources nationwide (dimensions, features, pricing, distance to fiber and more).

“It is a huge win for property owners and mobile operators as a massive surge of high-speed connected devices and applications come online,” TeleWorld Solutions CEO Shervin Gerami said. “It also solves many of the inefficiencies that have plagued the process of wireless network deployment.”

To learn more about Bisnow partner TeleWorld Solutions, click here.