We build and own secure and shared wireless network technology and infrastructure that help communities and carriers realize the promise of 5G.

Dense Air partners with cities and carriers to create plug-and-play active neutral host 5G small cell infrastructure that more efficiently densifies wireless networks by reducing the need for redundant radios in the same critical indoor and outdoor locations.

What We Do

For cities, Dense Air expands wireless access to underserved groups and accelerates the connected city ecosystem through a single shared network. For carriers, Dense Air improves small cell economics through active neutral hosting to enable faster and more targeted network builds, better customer experiences, and secure and transparent network administration. Dense Air’s small cells, deployed intelligently, drive more capacity from less spectrum.

How We Do It

Dense Air builds and operates Open RAN “neutral host” networks. Dense Air’s single shared architecture provides a secure, seamless, and simultaneous experience for mobile network operators, ISPs, enterprise private networks, and municipal uses such as borderless classrooms and first responder networks. Dense Air pursues innovative partnerships with communities to deploy neutral host small cell architecture across cities, using intelligent network insights to efficiently extend and enhance connectivity without overbuilding.

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The Status Quo Is Broken

Solutions Driven by Big Data

Secure and Shared Small Cells

Shared Networks for Better Connectivity

Expanded and Inclusive Coverage

The Status Quo Is Broken

Today’s Wireless Communications Infrastructure Struggles to Support Cities and Communities

5G performance requires each mobile network operator (MNO) to operate both a macro network that provides minimum coverage over a large area, and a small cell that addresses growing data capacity needs at the macro ‘cell edge’. If every MNO densifies the cell edge by building discrete and overlapping small cell networks, the result will be overloaded infrastructure, burdensome capital expenditure, and overlooked neighborhoods, creating a disconnect across enterprise, healthcare, and educational services, and widening the digital divide between well-served and underserved communities.

Cities

Many traditionally underserved communities experience limited connectivity. Network enhancements at the cell edge happen only where it is economical for individual MNOs to do so, resulting in a decline in market competition and city services. The time and cost to access city assets needed for small cell networks creates deployment barriers, leaving some areas underutilized while others are overbuilt.

Mobile Network Operator (MNO)

5G networks promise enhanced, pervasive connectivity to support new uses and business opportunities, yet MNOs must make trade-offs in their cell edge deployments. MNOs lack incentive to develop their own expensive and time-consuming ubiquitous, dense networks, leading to unequal outcomes. Without cities and communities engaged as partners, getting access to the necessary poles and other assets is difficult, further slowing down 5G deployment and risking leaving entire neighborhoods behind.

Enterprise & Industry

Pervasive, secure 5G mobile networks enable new business use cases, from IoT applications to private networking. Across cities, however, commercial real estate, hospitality, educational, and healthcare facilities lack adequate network coverage or capacity, severely limiting users’ mobile connection experiences. Property owners must invest in mobile connectivity to remain competitive, and cities must empower operators to efficiently invest in unserved and underserved locations.

Solutions Driven by Big Data

Targeted Small Cell Deployment Using Advanced Analysis

Using DenseWare, its big data analytics and AI platform, Dense Air pinpoints where small cells can make the greatest impact at the cell edge: street by street, building by building, and floor by floor. These real-time network insights optimize Dense Air’s ability to deploy a neutral host network on a highly targeted, plug-and-play basis that enhances and extends each MNO’s existing services while avoiding interference with the macro network.

About DenseWare

DenseWare provides operators with the tools and methodology to see and improve every corner of their mobile networks. DenseWare uses 4G and 5G network performance data to visualize network weaknesses—both indoors and outdoors—recommend small cell deployment locations, and predict improvements for end users. With a secure, privacy-preserving view into the usage of MNOs’ networks, Dense Air can profile all mobile networks to recommend the best options for end users.

Plug and Play on Existing Infrastructure

Once DenseWare identifies optimal small cell deployment locations, Dense Air partners with cities, communities, and property owners to deploy its networks. Rather than requiring new poles or excessive equipment, Dense Air’s small cell solutions attach to partners’ existing infrastructure, preventing disruption and creating a small cell layer closer to end users, enhancing connection experience and network efficiencies.

Secure and Shared Small Cells

Neutral Host Small Cells Facilitate Multiple Use Cases

A Dense Air small cell is fully virtualized to securely separate domains: mobile network operators, private networks, and public networks each have their own private “slice.” The cells fully integrate with operators’ core networks, enabling direct control by the operators and broadcasting each mobile operator’s network ID on either shared CBRS or the MNO’s own spectrum. This allows seamless user handover from the macro cell to small cells without roaming, ensuring uninterrupted mobility and enhanced user experience. To the operator, a Dense Air small cell looks like any other node on its own network. By improving both capacity offload and spectral efficiency, Dense Air small cells reduce the burden on macro cells and increase an MNO’s existing network capability.

Core

Dense Air uses a proprietary 3GPP-compatible neutral host entity (NHE) to ensure small cell shareability. The NHE, a fully contained software solution deployed within Dense Air’s data center, enables simple integration with MNOs’ core networks by presenting a virtual eNB/gNB interfacefor each neutral host small cell. This system eliminates the need for overlapping radio deployments, allows the aggregation of multiple small cells into a single eNB/gNB for large deployments, and enables private and public wireless network tenants to use the same radio infrastructure.

Radio Access Network (RAN)

Dense Air’s shared plug-and-play small cell solution enables network densification and extension for both 4G and 5G. Compared to each MNO deploying its own small cell RAN, Dense Air’s active multi-tenant RAN is more scalable, deployable, efficient, and attractive—both aesthetically and economically. The compact designs target indoor and outdoor deployments with the flexibility for wired or wireless backhaul.

Shared or Bring-Your-Own (BYO) Spectrum

Dense Air uses either dedicated shared spectrum or allows an MNO to use its own spectrum, and it applies advanced radio techniques to prevent interference with MNOs’ adjacent networks. Dense Air’s small cells significantly reduce co-channel interference, increase signal-to-noise ratios, and enable much higher priority resource block efficiency.

Shared Networks for Better Connectivity

Shared Infrastructure Expands Access and Use Cases

Dense Air securely and simultaneously supports multiple operators, simplifying installation, reducing visual pollution, and safeguarding consumers‘ choices of provider. Creating dedicated, private network “slices” for each operator benefits cities, asset owners, industry, and enterprise, and creates a network that is more economical for each tenant than building its own.

Cities & Asset Owners

Dense Air helps cities, communities, and other asset owners become stakeholders in new business models. By partnering with local governments, Dense Air proactively helps ensure that connectivity is available where it matters most. Dense Air’s neutral host, secure, and shared RAN solution provides asset managers with technology that conforms with international standards on form factor, electrical usage, and planning regulations. Multi-tenancy encourages competition, consumer choice, and innovation that can help close the digital divide by enabling coverage and capacity in areas that might otherwise be overlooked, benefiting communities and driving connected-city infrastructure initiatives.

Industry & Enterprise

Dense Air helps businesses and property owners offer robust wireless connectivity across offices and industrial premises. Small cell neutral host deployments ensure consistent connectivity, regardless of the operator that clients and customers choose. A neutral host approach is even more valuable as shared offices and “bring your own device” models become increasingly common.

Dense Air can also enable private networks for Internet of Things applications across logistics, industry, and manufacturing. For highly sensitive use cases such as healthcare campuses and educational facilities, Dense Air’s neutral host single RAN approach can be privately managed onsite for critical communications, secure connectivity, and dedicated network bandwidth for emergency services.

Expanded and Inclusive Coverage

Effective 5G Coverage Supports Digital Equity

Poor coverage and network congestion hurt municipalities, operators, and end users. As society increasingly depends on technology, connectivity issues disproportionately harm those who are already underprivileged, denying access to everything from educational tools to job opportunities. By partnering with Dense Air to proactively tackle these urgent technology challenges, cities and operators can make their residents and customers true stakeholders in future networks, closing the digital divide and ensuring that connectivity needs are met across demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic lines.

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