Case Study: Major Metro Area
Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta is the capital city of the southeast, a city of the future with strong ties to its past. In the last two decades Atlanta has experienced unprecedented growth -- the official city population remains steady, at about 420,000, but the metro population has grown in the past decade by nearly 40%, from 2.9 million to 4.1 million people. A good measure of this growth is the ever-changing downtown skyline, along with skyscrapers constructed in the Midtown, Buckhead, and perimeter business districts.

Facts

  • Atlanta area covers over 6,000 sq. miles
  • Home to more than 4.1 million people
  • Population growth of nearly 40% in 10 years
  • 65% of the population under 35 years old
  • 90% housing occupancy
  • Nearly 20 million annual visitors
  • More than 950 shopping centers

Challenges
Atlanta's population growth has spawned the demand for increased wireless telecommunications systems for its mobile workers, local residents and visitors. Although Atlanta has numerous wireless carriers, multiple networks, and a plethora of towers, current cellular deployments do not provide adequate coverage or capacity to meet the demand. Cellular users often experience dropped calls or spotty service.

  • Large, diverse, mobile population
  • Increasing demand for cellular usage
  • Spotty wireless coverage city-wide
  • Limited budgets
  • Cellular infrastructure out of capacity
  • Citizens concerned about environmental issues regarding cell towers

NextG Solution
The City of Atlanta is meeting its wireless challenges by enabling an innovative wireless network from NextG Networks. This cost-effective, RF-over-Fiber transport network significantly improves wireless coverage within capacity-constrained urban and isolated suburban areas.

Additionally, NextG Networks' scalable, microcellular-site architecture enables cities to reduce the proliferation of wireless infrastructure. Instead of erecting additional cellular towers and wireless rooftop sites, carriers can migrate toward small, unobtrusive antennas that are placed on existing utility poles, street signs, and other discrete locations in the public right-of-way.

Such antennas from NextG Networks are connected via fiber to base equipment at remote locations, thus providing a distributed network architecture with failover protection. Fiber-fed distributed antenna networks improve cellular wireless coverage and can add the capability to implement public safety services.

NextG Networks is a carrier's carrier that operates, manages, and maintains a telecommunications network in the City of Atlanta. As such, NextG uses the City's streetlight poles, utility poles and traffic signal poles and the city can benefit from franchise fee revenues they receive from NextG Networks.

Most importantly, residents, mobile workers and visitors will benefit from the expanded and reliable wireless voice and broadband data coverage and capacity. It's a win-win situation.

Benefits

  • Expanded, reliable wireless voice and data coverage and capacity
  • Supports advanced wireless voice and data services from existing carriers
  • Minimizes future construction by using advanced fiber optic technology
  • Provides a potential source of revenue for Atlanta
  • Increases (redundant) capacity and capability to add new services and carriers
  • Utilizes inconspicuous equipment
  • No need for new towers or lights

Specifications

  • Frequency: 850 MHz and 1.9 GHz available, 2.4 GHz ready
  • Traffic: iDen, GSM, CDMA
  • Number of Nodes: 51
  • Population Served: Downtown, Midtown, Buckhead
  • Miles of Fiber: over 600
  • Local Operations Center