Airports have been among the earliest sites for private cellular and remain a major focus for vendors and service providers, as solutions mature and spectrum options proliferate. They already generate huge investments into public cellular (indoor and outdoor) as well as being headline sites for Wi-Fi deployment and use. They also employ dozens of other wireless technologies, from radar to critical voice communications.

In the case of airports, the largest are so large and diverse that they actually resemble cities, with “private” networks serving an environment actually quite similar to a small national operator or regional MNO. For example, Dallas Fort-Worth airport spans 27 square miles – larger than the island of Manhattan or the principality of San Marino. They may have 100s of companies as tenants, and 10000s of employees – as well as passengers, vehicles and IoT devices. This may mean that they end up with multiple private wireless networks in different parts of the airfield – from the passenger terminal to maintenance hangars to hotels, to the car-rental facility.

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