Randy Cox, Nokia Networks’ head of product management for small cells, insisted demand for the technology had moved beyond one-off mass events to “everyday environments”, but conceded European deployments continue to fall behind.

Speaking at a press briefing in London, Cox admitted the term small cells was merely hype three years ago, but the company was now starting to see its efforts in the area “come to fruition”.

Nokia boosted its presence in the small cell market following its acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, which was first announced in mid-2015.

Without offering any concrete numbers, Cox said the company “had experienced tremendous growth” in terms of small cell unit shipments and revenue.

“I wouldn’t say we are on the up part of the hockey stick yet, but in terms of units shipped, we better than doubled last year.”

Nokia offers a portfolio of femto, small cells and outdoor carrier Wi-Fi offerings, as well as unlicensed systems for indoor and outdoor coverage.

Cox said the company works closely with operators on deployment, not only on the software side, but also in “understanding their network” and removing some of the obstacles from an engineering side.

Nokia said it can deploy an indoor small cell in as little as 20 minutes.

Cox also offered a number of use cases, focusing on some of the company’s recent deployments at large scale one-off events in Australia, Singapore and Mecca.

However, while such “hot zone capacity” needs have been traditional deployments for small cells, Cox said demand was evolving globally to everyday scenarios.

“If you look at China, you have small cities with a million people in them. And in specific areas, you can see where the capacity demand is absolutely sky rocketing,” he said, explaining capacity based small cell systems “are able to handle these types of demands.”

Europe lagging
Cox said North America and China “lead by a long shot” in terms of deployments, while Japan and South East Asia “were coming up to speed”.

Perhaps surprisingly, Europe lags behind even Latin America and the Middle East.

The executive said it was a “puzzle” why there was not more uptake in Europe, given the demand for coverage in major cities like London.

“Partially, it could be because 3G is still more prominent than LTE, but even in London there is a demand for 4G that is just not being served,” he said.

“I still think there is a tendency by operators to feel that small cells are not the right answer. They may think it’s too difficult to deploy. There are a lot of trials and experiments and testing, but pulling the trigger of actual deployment in Europe is behind.”

He added a recent small cell partnership with Telefonica, announced at the 2017 Mobile World Congress, could “hopefully prove to be an example for deployment in Europe to take off”.