There are a few companies already positioning themselves to do just that (wholesale licensed or unlicensed small cell access to the carriers). Virgin Media being an example in the UK and TowerStream in the US.
In the macrocell market, you have independent companies operating the towers on which multiple wireless carriers locate their equipment. Seems like there's an opportunity for someone to do the same thing in the small cell market.
Vodafone's CTO is saying you need to be first in to get the good small cell sites, but it might have already been beaten in London by rival O2. O2 acquired the rights to street furniture like lampposts in Westminster and Chelsea for its public Wi-Fi network rollout with Ruckus Wireless.
So Vodafone can maybe do that in Manchester, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Plymouth, Leeds. Meanwhile 02 will seal it in London, Bradford, Sheffield and EE will nail Birmingham, Edinburgh and Nottingham.
I've picked the cities and the operators randomly just to make a point. But whilst they set about sealing whichever cities they can the operators will still end up having to do deals with one another to share access one way or another. And some municipal authorities will mandate shared access anyway.
Are lampposts really the mobile operator's equivalent of IPR? Talk about a dumb pipe....
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