Small cells, big moment: Freshwave rings in new era with first indoor 5G JOTS-ready data call at the Small Cells World Summit
We surprised an industry legend at the Small Cells World Summit (SCWS) in June and made telecoms history in the process.
Live on stage at the 2025 Summit, we placed the first ever indoor 5G neutral host JOTS-ready data call to none other than Dave Morris of Virgin Media O2, celebrating his imminent retirement and immense contributions to the industry as chair of the JOTS Forum. Our CEO, Simon Frumkin, and Workspace Group’s Head of Technology, Chris Boultwood, made the call from Workspace’s Record Hall straight to Dave while he was on stage – a fitting tribute to someone described by those in the industry as the “spiritual leader” of JOTS. And beyond the telecoms industry, this marks an important moment of progress in delivering 5G indoors via small cells.
Taking place during a panel discussion on in-building connectivity with our CTO, Tom Bennett, it was a truly heartfelt moment. Dave has been instrumental in shaping the UK’s shared mobile infrastructure landscape, enabling mobile network operators (MNOs) and their partners to deliver high-quality indoor connectivity through collaboration. The neutral host industry owes a huge debt of gratitude to JOTS and Dave’s ambitious work and it was an honour to celebrate his legacy with such a landmark first.
Thank you, Dave, and we wish you all the best in your well-earned retirement!
The stunt was just one of many highlights during two packed days of knowledge-sharing and collaboration at the event. With over 300 attendees from across the telecoms ecosystem – MNOs, local authorities, vendors, and technology leaders – the message was clear: small cells are no longer just a “gap filler”. They’re a strategic enabler of new services, revenue, and connectivity in hard-to-reach places and high-demand environments.
The opportunity to hear directly from others in the industry about practical insights, lessons learned, and bold visions for what comes next was incredibly valuable. Throughout it all, one theme stood out: collaboration fuels progress. From MNOs working together through JOTS to local authorities enabling smarter deployment, the event underscored that innovation thrives when we move forward together.
A huge thank you to the Small Cell Forum for catalysing connections across the community, creating the space for vital conversations, for championing the future of small cells so consistently and, of course, helping us surprise Dave during a panel session live on stage!
From big firsts to big ideas
Simon took to the stage for a presentation on “Demonstrating ROI: the neutral host advantage” during which he illustrated how the enterprise-pays appetite for assured connectivity via small cells has expanded rapidly over the past five years.
Having now connected more than 36 million sq ft of real estate to multi-operator mobile connectivity, we’ve seen demand grow from organisations such as co-working firms and wider commercial real estate to NHS hospitals and other public sector organisations.
And why is that demand growing? Because people want to be connected wherever they are and to be able to work in the way that suits them. Organisations wanting to give their people the tools to be productive understand that having seamless mobile connectivity when they’re in the workplace is a must.
Our 2025 Mobile Connectivity ROI Index surveyed 900 C-suite and IT decision-makers from across a variety of sectors and found that they believe poor current connectivity costs the UK up to £100bn in productivity losses annually. But, encouragingly, they think that better indoor mobile connectivity could reduce that impact by as much as 70%.
Simon spoke about some real-world examples of our projects, such as enabling digital connectivity more sustainably at SIDARA’s flagship London office with our world first Omni Network on the ANDREW RP5000.
And his presentation concluded with an engaging Q&A and looking at where we are today: making seamless connectivity for more people in more places a reality with live indoor 4G and 5G multi-operator small cells
Collaborating to make indoor coverage work for everyone
Meanwhile, our CTO Tom Bennett joined a panel with other industry leaders on “Requirements and technologies for in-building connectivity”, addressing both the promise and the practicalities of neutral host solutions, such as indoor multi-operator small cells and distributed antenna systems (DAS).
The panel covered the modernisation and future of DAS in in-building connectivity, emphasising the importance of cost-effective solutions and collaboration, including strategies for implementing 5G indoors using existing infrastructures. Key points included the need for specialised neutral hosts for different verticals, the role of open RAN in enhancing performance and minimising costs, and the significance of security and private networks.
The importance of meeting customer needs and unit costs was stressed, along with the potential for public-private collaboration to drive adoption and innovation for in-building connectivity. The need for building trust between MNOs and neutral hosts was underscored as crucial for ecosystem growth: Tom highlighted JOTs and Dave Morris for his leading role in developing this framework – enabling the UK to lead in neutral host and multi-operator connectivity by standardising deployments. And then the phone rang!
Find out more about our work in indoor connectivity.