How We Planned 4G Radio Sites Without Building Every Site From Scratch

Published: August 17, 2026 | Last Technically Reviewed: August 17, 2026

Myanmar Telenor Nationwide Mobile Broadband Network Planning - Field Case Series, Part 1

Quick Answer

RF simulation can tell you where radio coverage requires a site, but it does not automatically mean that a completely new physical site must be constructed at every simulated location. In the Myanmar Telenor project, one of the decisions we had to make was how to satisfy nationwide radio coverage requirements while making practical use of infrastructure that already existed.

The planning principle was straightforward: meet the RF coverage requirement first, then check whether a nearby existing site could satisfy that requirement before adding a new build. Reusing or co-locating at an existing site was useful only when it remained technically acceptable. Where it did not, a new site was still required.

That distinction turned the RF simulation output into a planning input-not the final construction list.

RF Simulation Gave Us Candidate Locations, Not the Final Build List

Telenor entered Myanmar with a nationwide mobile-communications license and needed to build a new mobile broadband network covering the country. The overall project included the Mobile Core Network, Radio Access Network and Mobile Bearer Network, but this case focuses only on one part of the RAN planning process: deciding whether a radio location required new construction or could use existing site infrastructure.

For the RAN, the planning inputs included:

• RAN technology requirements;

• available radio spectrum;

• nationwide RF simulation maps;

• coverage targets for urban, suburban, rural and mountainous areas;

• and existing anchor-site information.

The RF engineers used dedicated planning software to generate the radio simulations. The original project record also notes that simulation quality depended on three very practical inputs: the accuracy and detail of the nationwide map data, the accuracy of the coordinates for existing MPT sites, and the experience of the RF engineer operating the planning tools.

That is an important boundary.

A simulation could answer:

It could not answer, by itself:

We still had to take the simulated locations and compare them against the infrastructure that already existed on the ground.

We Compared Planned Locations Against Existing Sites

This was one of the most practical parts of the planning work.

Telenor was entering the market without an established nationwide site portfolio of its own. The broader construction strategy recorded in the project was to rent existing resources where practical, minimize unnecessary self-construction and co-locate equipment where appropriate.

For the RAN specifically, the project document states that the RF-planned site locations should, where possible, overlap with existing MPT sites so that those site resources could be leased. At the same time, RF engineers were expected to minimize site count only while still meeting the required coverage targets.

In practice, the logic was closer to this:

RF-required location
Check nearby existing site
Revalidate coverage
Reuse or co-locate if practical
Build a new site only when necessary

The second and third steps are what prevent this from becoming a simple cost-cutting exercise.

An existing site was useful only if moving the planned radio equipment to that location still allowed the network to meet the required coverage. If the reused location materially compromised the RF objective, then the infrastructure saving would defeat the purpose of the network build.

So existing infrastructure never overrode the technical requirement.

The priority remained:

This is different from taking the cheapest available tower or rooftop and hoping that radio coverage will somehow work afterward.

Fewer New Sites Did Not Mean Lower Coverage Standards

"Build fewer new sites" can easily be misunderstood.

In this project, it did not mean:

• stretching every radio site to its maximum possible range;

• accepting coverage gaps;

• reducing the specified coverage target;

• or selecting existing locations purely because they were cheaper.

The planning order was:

Coverage requirement
Feasible radio location
Existing-resource reuse
New construction when required

The wrong order would have been:

Cheapest existing site
Adjust the RF design around it
Accept whatever coverage remains

The project documentation is explicit that RF engineers had to reduce site quantity under the condition that the coverage targets were still satisfied.

That single condition changed the meaning of infrastructure reuse.

Reusing an existing MPT location was not an objective by itself. It was an optimization applied after the technical requirement had been established.

This mattered in a nationwide network because site construction was not just the cost of radio hardware. A completely new site could also involve site acquisition or leasing, civil work, ventilation, fire protection, waterproofing, power construction, equipment integration and access connectivity. The original project describes these physical site activities as part of building the new mobile network.

Reducing unnecessary new builds could therefore simplify deployment, but only when the radio design remained valid.

Site Location and Site Type Were Two Different Decisions

Finding a workable physical location did not complete the RAN planning task.

After the RF site list had been established, the equipment-side planning still had to determine the appropriate type of radio site and the equipment requirements for each location.

The original project documentation identifies Macro, Micro, Pico and Femto as the main site categories and notes that the appropriate type had to be selected according to factors such as RF simulation results and construction cost. It then states that equipment selection depended on the site type, capacity requirement, reliability requirement, security requirement and future expansion possibility.

For this case, the important point is not the detailed differences among those site types.

It is the planning sequence:

Finding where coverage was needed did not automatically determine what hardware should be installed there.

Location came from the RF requirement and real site conditions. Site type and equipment came afterward.

That kept the project from turning into a product-first exercise.

The Engineering Lesson

The principle I take from this project is simple:

The RF simulation created candidate radio locations. Existing infrastructure then gave us opportunities to avoid unnecessary construction. But the reuse decision only remained valid when the technical coverage requirement could still be met.

That order matters.

A useful planning sequence is:

Coverage requirement
Capacity requirement
Candidate location
Existing-site check
Revalidate coverage
Decide reuse or new build
Select site type and equipment

Not:

Choose available hardware or the cheapest site
Force the radio design around it

This was a nationwide cellular project, and the physical scale was very different from the enterprise networks we work with today. But the planning discipline-requirements first, hardware second-is still relevant.

Want to See the Complete Myanmar Telenor Network Planning Project?

This case covers only one decision from the complete Myanmar Telenor network-planning project: how RF-required site locations were checked against existing infrastructure before deciding which sites actually needed to be built.

The full project also covered Mobile Core planning, RAN planning, microwave, fiber, optical transmission, IP transport, network capacity, reliability, QoS, security and network management. The original planning work ultimately produced site lists, capacity requirements and planning reports across these different domains.

You can download the complete Myanmar Telenor Nationwide Mobile Broadband Network Planning white paper for free to see the broader planning process and how the different network domains were connected.

Applying the Same Planning Logic to Business Wi-Fi

A nationwide cellular RAN and a hotel, retail store or SMB Wi-Fi network are very different technologies and very different scales. The Telenor site-planning process should not be treated as a direct design template for enterprise WLAN deployments.

The transferable principle is the planning order.

In current hotel, café, restaurant, retail, coworking, student-housing and SMB projects, we similarly start with the floor plan, client density, required coverage areas, wall and room layout, applications, existing cabling, candidate AP locations, PoE availability and uplink requirements before recommending equipment.

Current projects may use very different enterprise Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 access points, but the appropriate model should be selected only after coverage, capacity, mounting and uplink requirements are understood.

Our high-traffic business network solutions page follows this project-specific approach. If you are planning a new network, expanding an existing WLAN, replacing APs or switches, or reviewing an existing BOM, you can use the reference architectures there or submit a floor plan, device list or current BOM for a project-specific review.

Myanmar Telenor Field Case Series

Part 1 - How We Planned 4G Radio Sites Without Building Every Site From Scratch

Next in this series: How We Used Layered Maps to Plan a Nationwide 4G Transport Network

Later in this series: How We Sized GE, 10GE, 40GE and 200GE Links for a Mobile Transport Network

Full project: Myanmar Telenor Nationwide Mobile Broadband Network Planning White Paper