Celona Neutral Host – Reliable Performance in the Real World

Mehmet and Vanlin present an overview of Celona Neutral Host, describe the benefits of a neutral host model, and demonstrate performance results at our Stanford Health Care deployment.

In this presentation, Celona CTO Mehmet Yavuz and Director of Research Vanlin Sathya outlined how Celona’s Neutral Host solution addresses the growing problem of poor indoor public cellular coverage, which is being exacerbated by higher-frequency 5G bands and energy-efficient building materials that block signals. Enterprises are increasingly dependent on consistent mobile connectivity for staff, customers, and critical applications like E911, making reliable indoor cellular essential. Celona’s solution now supports both T-Mobile and AT&T and features cloud-managed, dual 4G/5G access points (AP20) operating over CBRS, enabling rapid and cost-effective deployments without the complexity of traditional distributed antenna systems (DAS).

The speakers highlighted three main customer scenarios: new building projects, DAS replacement or upgrades, and buildings previously underserved due to cost or size. They emphasized how Celona’s turnkey model streamlines the onboarding process with operators and automates provisioning, helping customers go from interest to service activation within weeks. The system integrates with existing IT infrastructure, including switches, firewalls, and policy servers, while supporting a wide range of devices from smartphones to scanners and medical equipment. The healthcare sector, in particular, has become a strong use case, with deployments like Stanford Health Care demonstrating significant improvements in signal coverage and reliability compared to legacy DAS and Wi-Fi setups.

Through real-world deployment data and performance comparisons, the presentation demonstrated that Celona’s Neutral Host consistently outperforms macro signals, Wi-Fi, and DAS in terms of coverage, throughput, and voice quality, especially in loaded and mobile scenarios. In a live demo, Celona’s APs delivered reliable signal strength across hospital floors, elevators, and critical care areas, enabling seamless roaming and robust voice services. The synergy between neutral host capabilities and private 5G functions allows healthcare customers to solve immediate connectivity issues while laying the foundation for advanced applications like staff communications, patient monitoring, and IPTV, all without overloading the Wi-Fi network. This dual-purpose infrastructure is quickly proving to be a transformative investment for enterprise environments.