The greater Dallas/Ft. Worth area, known fondly by some as the home of the Cowboys, hosts the headquarters of myriad major communications companies such as AT&T, Ericsson, Hutton Communications, CommScope and Zinwave, among others. Now, the headquarters of South Korean DAS OEM SOLiD’s U.S. operations resides in this hotbed of communications.
The in-building cellular and public safety infrastructure provider has opened of its new headquarters in Plano, Texas, a suburb in the Dallas metro area after moving from Southern California.
“We needed a place to grow and California was not favorable for that. We needed more space, access to more top talent, technical and otherwise,” SOLiD Americas’ President Ken Sandfeld said in a phone interview.
The facility provides SOLiD with the space needed for its seven-year growth plan, which includes room for research and development on technologies such as virtualized RAN and new types of amplifiers.
“We need to enhance our logistics capabilities for assembly and kitting to handle more volume for the United States and Central and Latin America, as well as keeping more inventory on hand,” Sandfeld said.
The new SOLiD facility includes:
DAS Growth Continues in the Large Venues
The market for large venue, carrier funded-DAS was supposed to being drying up, according to industry analysts, but Sandfeld said it continues to be “extremely strong,” being driven by upgrades to existing systems.
“Traditional legacy projects have continued to grow in the last two years,” he said. “If that part of the business is plateauing, we have not experienced it yet. These systems are not lasting very long. Five years is the lifespan of a venue DAS.”
SOLiD is replacing legacy systems with new technology that supports higher density, higher capacity and higher signal strengths, according to Sandfeld, as well as fixing mistakes that were made on previous deployments.
“A lot of projects made mistakes in the technology that was deployed,” he said. “We see venues that deployed multiple DAS technologies by different OEMs, which leads to disparate systems, and they are now trying to consolidate them.”
As far as the “Middleprise” market, commercial venues from 100,000 to 500,000 square feet, is concerned, it is growing, but some technical issues still need to be worked out before it really takes off, according to Sandfeld.
“The market will pivot on the Middleprise faster when the standards for network integration for IoT are created,” he said. “The ability to interoperate with the core networks of the wireless operators needs to become more standardized and virtualized. Until that happens, the Middleprise will grow at a slower rate.”
ExteNet Systems’ Deployments in Sports Venues Tops 25
ExteNet Systems echoes Sandfeld’s bullishness on the large venue market. Recently the company reached a milestone of deploying operational multi-carrier distributed network deployments at 25 sports and entertainment venues across North America,covering over 25 million square feet of indoor space, alongside a corresponding 1,500 acres of outdoor space.
ExteNet’s footprint in the sports and entertainment market now features deployments across the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, AHL, NCAA and Formula One. Some of the venues include Bankers Life Fieldhouse, Barclays Center, Dunkin’ Donuts Center, Madison Square Garden, Marlins Park and Circuit of The Americas (COTA).
J. Sharpe Smith is senior editor of the AGL eDigest. He joined AGL in 2007 as contributing editor to the magazine and as editor of eDigest email newsletter. He has 27 years of experience writing about industrial communications, paging, cellular, small cells, DAS and towers. Previously, he worked for the Enterprise Wireless Alliance as editor of the Enterprise Wireless Magazine. Before that, he edited the Wireless Journal for CTIA and he began his wireless journalism career with Phillips Publishing, now Access Intelligence. Sharpe Smith may be contacted at: [email protected].