The off-air date is certain.
The replacement timeline rarely is.

THE NOTICE TO QUIT DILEMMA

The individual pressures are familiar. What has changed is the degree to which they are converging. Mobile traffic continues to grow, customers expect reliable data everywhere, and many of the urban locations under the greatest pressure are also the hardest places in which to retain or replace network infrastructure. Ofcom reported that UK mobile data use increased by 18% during 2025, exceeding 1.2 billion GB a month, while 5G data use grew by 53%.

We increasingly treat mobile connectivity as essential infrastructure, yet its availability remains governed by the built environment. When a strategically important rooftop is lost to redevelopment, the network cannot simply relocate to the next available building. The replacement has to work technically, operationally and commercially, and that combination is increasingly difficult to find. The available alternatives may not provide the same height, location, access, power or commercial viability. Planning, acquisition and build programmes then have to operate within dense streetscapes, heritage considerations and competing demands on public assets.

Mobile connectivity is expected to be continuous. The built environment supporting it never stands still. Virgin Media O2 has said that it takes more than two years on average to replace a mobile site, with some sites remaining offline for more than seven years. Against that background, an NTQ is not simply another property milestone. It can expose a gap in the network plan that persists long after the original equipment has been removed.

However, an NTQ can also create an important point of reassessment. The immediate priority is to protect service when the rooftop is lost, but the wider question is what the location now needs from the network. The original macro site may already have required additional street-level capacity, meaning a small-cell layer introduced as a temporary bridge could prove valuable beyond the immediate requirement.

Time is usually lost when the necessary information sits across different teams and organisations but is not brought together early enough within a shared service-continuity plan. Property holds the possession timetable, and radio understands the network risk, while replacement options, assets and permissions sit elsewhere.

The biggest loss of time often occurs before anyone formally asks: what happens to customers if this site leaves the network on the current programme? By the time that question reaches the right combination of people, the available window may already be significantly compressed. A temporary solution is then expected to compensate for months of sequential decision-making.

If I were managing the programme, I would want early agreement on the credible off-air date, the network function at risk, the realistic permanent replacement programme and the deadline for an interim solution, to give everyone a common basis for decisions. This is also why parties serving or facilitating an NTQ should not see connectivity as solely the operator’s problem. A developer, site provider or agent may have entirely legitimate reasons for requiring possession, but early visibility of the programme can make the difference between an orderly transition and a prolonged service issue.

The simple answer is the full role the site plays within the surrounding network. It is tempting to reduce the issue to a question of whether there will still be signal in the area. That is rarely a sufficient test. An established rooftop may provide wide-area coverage, carry a significant concentration of traffic, support an important route or venue or relieve pressure on several neighbouring sites. Once it is removed, those neighbouring sites have to work harder. So, the coverage problem can actually be magnified across other neighbouring cells.

Customers may still see bars on their phones, but the experience can deteriorate sharply at the times and places that matter most. Data sessions slow down, uploads fail, applications stall and transactions time out. That distinction between nominal coverage and usable service is crucial.

People do not experience networks through a coverage map. They experience them when they are trying to make a payment, access a ticket, authenticate an account, join a video call or navigate through a city. The impact may also be uneven. One operator may be affected more than another. One street may struggle only during the lunchtime peak. A station approach or retail area may experience a capacity problem even though adjacent streets appear unaffected.

That is why I would not begin with the instruction to “just replace the mast”. I would begin with the radio and traffic evidence:

• What function are we losing?
• Where will the pressure move?
• Which customers, locations and periods are most exposed?
• What minimum service outcome must the interim design achieve?

If that requirement is not clearly defined, there is a real risk of deploying infrastructure that is technically live but fails to solve the problem it was intended to address.

The most important change is to treat the potential loss of service as a shared programme risk early enough for each party to influence the outcome. Mobile Network Operators are doing this, by placing sites ‘At Risk’ but it is unclear if these sites are marked for coverage infill early enough in the capacity planning process.

For the operator
Translating the loss of the site into a clear coverage or capacity requirement and involving the appropriate radio, property, acquisition, delivery and commercial teams.

For the site provider, developer and their agents
Providing a reliable view of the development programme, access restrictions and the point at which equipment must genuinely be removed. If there is flexibility, even around access or phasing rather than the final date, that information can be extremely valuable.

For the local authority
The relevant people may sit across planning, highways, digital infrastructure, street lighting and asset management. Temporary small-cell feasibility can depend on those teams understanding the requirement and coordinating decisions around assets, power, permissions and street works.

Nobody needs to surrender their own objectives. A developer still needs to deliver its scheme. An operator still needs to protect network performance. A council still has to manage its assets and the public realm responsibly. The opportunity is to find the practical overlap between those objectives before the timetable becomes critical. My view is straightforward: if redevelopment is known, the connectivity conversation should begin before the notice is served. If that has not happened, it should begin as soon as the notice is received. Early engagement does not guarantee that a particular temporary solution will be 100% possible. But it does give the parties enough time to establish what is feasible, what is not and where decisions are genuinely required.

It starts with a precise understanding of the service requirement. From there, we can establish where temporary small cells are the right intervention and where another solution, or combination of solutions, will deliver the better outcome.

Temporary small cells are particularly relevant where the service risk is concentrated in a defined area and suitable street assets are available close to the area of demand. That might be a high-footfall retail street, a transport approach, a commercial district or a cluster of streets where neighbouring sites cannot absorb the displaced traffic. They can provide a targeted layer of coverage or capacity while acquisition and delivery of the permanent network solution continue.

The operator should consider the full range of options. These can include optimisation of surrounding sites, radio-parameter changes, additional capacity elsewhere, a replacement rooftop, a relocatable macro solution, an indoor intervention or a small-cell cluster. In some cases, the answer will be a combination.

There is no prize for forcing small cells into a use case that does not suit them.
The value of a good feasibility process lies in quickly identifying the strongest intervention, whether that is a temporary small-cell cluster, another solution or a combination.

Temporary should describe the role of the solution and its commercial horizon—not the standard of its design or operation.

A credible deployment starts with an agreed service objective. The design must then establish how many cells are required, where they should be located, which assets are structurally and operationally suitable, how power and resilient transmission will be provided, and how the radio layer will be integrated and accepted by the operator.

One small cell does not simply replace one macro site. Small cells operate over shorter distances, so the solution is normally a planned cluster positioned around the area of demand. The quality of that planning is what determines whether the deployment materially improves the customer experience.

Architecture is another important decision.

D-RAN
A distributed radio access network (D-RAN) approach, with radio equipment at or close to each site, may suit a tactical deployment and align well with an operator’s existing technical model.

C-RAN
A centralised radio access network (C-RAN) approach centralises baseband capability and can reduce the equipment required at street level, potentially making repeated or larger clusters more efficient. Being able to quickly provision dark fibre to the sites is also an important consideration for C-RAN, if not already deployed.

Neither is inherently the “temporary” option. The right choice depends on the operator’s standards, the available infrastructure, the scale of the requirement and the potential future role of the cluster.

Our role is to provide a joined-up delivery route around the operator’s radio solution, drawing on established street-asset access, urban small-cell experience, transmission infrastructure and ongoing operational support.

Ontix has urban infrastructure and delivery experience, including our Westminster concession and the deployment of 80 4G and 5G small cells with EE across the borough. That provides a more established starting point when an NTQ places the programme under pressure, rather than requiring every relationship, agreement and delivery process to be created from first principles.

Where we add value is in identifying the genuine constraints early, reducing unnecessary handovers and giving the operator a clearer, more deliverable route to service.
Under pressure, that clarity has real value. It allows decisions to be made on evidence rather than optimism.

Flexible commercial modelling for these short term sites, is also a consideration Ontix is also acutely aware of.

The exit plan should be designed at the same time as the deployment.
The parties need to agree who owns each asset and decision, what is included in the service, how performance will be reviewed and which events trigger removal, extension or migration. The commercial structure should reflect the uncertainty surrounding the permanent solution rather, than creating another inflexible commitment.

There should also be formal review points:

• Is the temporary cluster delivering the intended customer outcome?
• Has the permanent replacement programme moved?
• Has demand changed?
• Does the street-level layer now have an ongoing role within the network?
• Is there a need for additional capacity requirements in the future?

Temporary infrastructure should never become unmanaged infrastructure simply because the original deadline has passed.

For anyone currently facing an NTQ, I would begin with six questions:

1. What is the credible off-air date, and which legal or development dependencies could alter it?
2. Is the primary network risk coverage, capacity or both?
3. Where and when will customers experience that risk most severely?
4. What is the permanent replacement plan, and is it realistic — not best-case — delivery date?
5. Which interim options can be made operational within the available window?
6. What will trigger the temporary solution’s removal, extension or migration?

Those questions quickly establish whether the parties have a coordinated plan or a collection of separate assumptions.

The most productive first step is then a focused feasibility conversation involving the people who hold the evidence and the people who control the dependencies. If temporary small cells are appropriate, that conversation creates the basis for delivery. If they are not, it prevents further loss of time.

The objective is not to preserve every existing site indefinitely, nor to present temporary small cells as the answer to every NTQ. It is to ensure that a property change does not create an avoidable, prolonged connectivity problem while the permanent network catches up.

Danny Hoyle is Account Director at Ontix and a dedicated point of contact for the company’s mobile network operator customers.

He joined Ontix in July 2026 with nearly 22 years of telecommunications experience across distribution, specialist manufacturing, systems integration and vendor environments. His experience spans fixed fibre optics, 4G and 5G wireless infrastructure, small cells, macro networks and private 5G.

At Ontix, Danny works across customer relationships, commercial engagement and solution development, helping operators and infrastructure partners turn complex connectivity requirements into practical, deliverable solutions.

“An NTQ should not trigger a race to recreate the network that existed before. It should prompt a clear assessment of what the location needs now—and what it will need next.”

Danny Hoyle, Account Director, Ontix