State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

Building Upon a Decade of Deploying Small-Cell Solutions to Improve Connectivity

Route Fifty: VAIL, Colo. — Crown Castle, which bills itself as the nation’s largest provider of wireless infrastructure, has a history of installing traditional cell towers that dates back to 1994 and now numbers more than 40,000—mostly located in the nation’s top 100 markets.

But two Colorado success stories in particular highlight the Houston-based company’s decade-long push into small-cell solutions that set the stage for a boom in 4G LTE shared networks and now the Denver metro area’s growing move toward 5G.

“Where the growth is happening across the country is the demand for 5G services,” Tanya Friese, manager of government relations for Crown Castle, told Route Fifty in an interview. “We’re really at the beginning of kind of the hockey-stick deployment here of the number of sites needed.”

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