Citizens in all the local authorities taking part in the Word project complain about not having enough mobile coverage. No more so than in Bath when you have a rugby game on. The stadium is in the heart of the city. The problem gets worse when you have a Christmas market on or a big event taking place. There are two aspects to providing an acceptable level of service: coverage and capacity. The city of Bath suffers from too little of both. Planning permission for cell sites in the historic streets have been vetoed and masts pushed out onto the surrounding hills. This means there’s actually very little mobile network capacity in the city centre. The City of Bath has had an incorporated city for the last few hundred years that is the dominant landowner and landlord in the city which owns substantial assets. The council is adept at turning them into revenue to generate more public services. The Word project will use the extensive investments in CCT, ducting, buildings and street furniture to run a neutral host mobile network that they can then rent out, which will improve the mobile coverage in the area while generating revenue for the city. Neutral host, and more precisely the MOCN or Multi-Operator Core Networks variety, is the appropriate technology because in Bath there is not sufficient street furniture to mount four sets of mobile infrastructure. Under a MOCN model all operators share the equipment. This fits in well with the need to maintain the beauty of the city as a world heritage site. The single network will use Ofcom shared spectrum over 15 to 20 cell sites to cover a walking route from the station, up to the rugby ground, then left into the shops and restaurants and back down through the city. This demonstrates the use of small cells to provide high density coverage which is a core part of the Department for Science, Industry and Technology programme. The project will also include the Roman baths, with its subterranean element, which will use indoor equipment. The Rugby ground, a site called The recreation, or The Rec, has two stands, so as well as demand from fans there is demand from the back office facilities, medical and retail users.
