2014: The year AT&T’s mobile network goes small

AT&T has been poking and prodding small cells in its labs and out in the wild. The tiny little base stations will allow AT&T to surgically insert capacity into its HSPA and LTE networks in high-traffic areas like malls, stadiums and public areas where its customers are using their smartphones the most.

Those cells will bring a lot of benefits for consumers. They’ll offer up to greater speeds to customers in dense areas such as downtown financial districts and other high-traffic zones. They’ll bring stronger signals to the dead zones between cells on AT&T’s network. And they’ll bring greater coverage and capacity in difficult-to-penetrate indoor locations. Finally they’ll free up room on the macro network, giving customers in between small cells a better experience. But first AT&T has to work out the kinks. It’s a tricky business, AT&T Associate VP of Small Cells Gordon Mansfield said in a recent interview, because AT&T can’t just plop down a small cell anywhere. Since AT&T is using the same frequencies for small cells it’s using for its umbrella macro-network, interference becomes an issue. If the signal clash between the big and small networks is too great, customers won’t get faster connections. Instead, their phones would only see white noise.