- Airspan’s new small cell portfolio is designed to help mobile operators and enterprises expand 4G and 5G coverage and capacity
- The portfolio supports both 4G LTE/5G non-standalone and 5G standalone
- Airspan will be showcasing the small cell solution and a bunch of other products at its MWC booth next week
Airspan Networks is launching a new small cell portfolio called AirUnity Small Cells, but don’t ask them if this is “the year” for small cells.
“We aren’t looking at small cells in that way – this isn’t the year for small cells per se – we look at network requirements as evolutionary,” Airspan’s Amit Jain told Fierce via email. “This is a sustained optimization cycle – not a one-year spike (dense urban small cells can take 24-36 months for builds).”
Fair enough, because frankly, we’re getting a little tired of asking the question. It’s akin to the old: “What’s the next killer app?”
Jain, SVP and GM of In-Building Networks at Airspan, said operators need to add targeted capacity outdoors without overbuilding macro cells, and AirUnity offers flexible densification with “simplified deployment economics.”
At Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona next week, Airspan will be showcasing its latest small cells alongside its Digital DAS, 5G, air-to-ground and open RAN products and solutions.
Airspan supports 5G NSA, SA
Airspan describes AirUnity as the industry’s first small cell portfolio with an integrated baseband supporting 4G LTE and 5G New Radio (NR), including non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) modes across multiple frequency bands.
Why the LTE support in a 5G world? LTE remains very much in play for mobility, IoT and broad device compatibility, Jain said.
Many 5G networks still anchor to LTE, which is also the workhorse for voice. T-Mobile is the only major operator in the world that has launched Voice over NR; everyone else still uses Voice over LTE, he said.
Interestingly, the AirUnity portfolio uses EdgeQ’s baseband processor. EdgeQ is a Silicon Valley-based semiconductor company led by ex-Qualcomm executives. They came up with a software-defined 4G + 5G “base station on a chip,” enabling the converged multi-mode and multi-band support on a single chip.
Airspan is using EdgeQ’s technology across its entire portfolio of AirUnity small cells.
Airspan’s AirUnity portfolio also includes support for both time division duplex (TDD) and frequency division duplex (FDD) spectrum.
Practically speaking, all the low-band LTE networks globally use FDD. Carriers are now migrating FDD bands from LTE to 5G NR. “Operators manage mixed spectrum portfolios globally with TDD driving mid-band capacity and FDD supporting wide-area coverage,” Jain said.
Most of the new spectrum that regulators made available for 5G is TDD, he said. In the U.S., the C-band is TDD, as is the 2.5 GHz spectrum that T-Mobile acquired as part of the Sprint merger.
Where Airspan sees demand
AirUnity small cells address a range of user requirements, including enterprise coverage and capacity for large buildings and campuses, as well as residential and rural coverage.
As for where Airspan expects to see the most demand, Jain said they anticipate enterprise and in-building performance upgrades, outdoor targeted capacity expansion in dense environments and selective rural and residential deployments “where economics matter.”
Read next: What Fierce Network is watching for at MWC 2026: AI, 5G and network transformation