Band3 Dual Slant or Hor/Vert Omni Antenna

Thinking of a rural FD-LTE Picocell with OMNI coverage and the Nova 1W…
Does anybody know a Manufacturer of OMNI Antennas on Band 3 and Band 7 ?

I would think that you would have a difficult time finding an off-the-shelf dual-pol Omni in this band as anyone who owns spectrum in the 1800Mhz band uses sectors exclusively. IMHO, you’d be foolish not to. If you’re worried about the cost of an eNodeB, start off with three our four sectors with a power divider or several couplers feeding the antennas from a single eNodeB. While this isn’t an ideal configuration, I would think that the additional gain (not to mention flexibility) of sectors would cancel out the insertion loss of the power dividers. Plus — your antennas will be ready to accommodate the additional eNodeBs as you add them without having to fiddle with re-pointing your sub’s CPEs in the process.

If this sounds more expensive than you think it should, ask yourself this question (better yet, build a spreadsheet): how much does it cost later to visit a few subs to “fix” issues caused by moving from an Omni to a sector in the future? How much will it cost you in lost revenue if you loose subs because you have to deal with interference from another licensee in the band (and there are many in Band 3 especially at the edge of your license boundary), which impacts service quality/availability?

If I’ve learned one thing: this business has a minimum level of hard costs that have to be paid in order to build a network the right way (as in for long-term availability). You either pay those costs upfront, or you will pay more in the end… and that I can promise you.