The outdoor picocell market, which is still in the early stages of development, will reach USD 8 billion in global revenues by 2016, according to a report by ABI Research. The report also indicates that mobile operators have already started to compete on mobile broadband speeds apart from coverage, and small cells will help them differentiate their services. Operators are likely to start with identifying specific 'hot sites' in congested metro areas, and start using outdoor picocells to alleviate capacity demand. Outdoor small cells are another tool operators can use in conjunction with macro network optimization, Wi-Fi offload, caching, media compression, and other techniques.
