Wireless infrastructure services providers see distributed antenna systems (DAS) as logical extensions of their businesses. Like a cell tower, a DAS can be designed to support one carrier’s spectrum, or it can support several carriers and create multiple revenue streams for the system owner.
The DAS business model resembles the tower model, but the technology is different. For this reason, companies that supply tower equipment or build and upgrade towers have been acquirers of DAS businesses during recent years. Below is a list of major DAS-related acquisitions.
Crown Castle’s purchase of NextG Networks (announced December 2011)
The tower giant paid $1 billion for the nation’s largest provider of outdoor DAS. At the time of the acquisition, NextG had 7,000 DAS nodes on air. Now, Crown Castle has more than 12,000 active nodes.
Ninety percent of the NextG nodes are in urban and suburban locations, with 80% in the top ten U.S. metropolitan areas, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth.
SBA Communications/ExteNet Systems’ purchase of Mobilitie’s DAS assets (announced February 2012)
SBA Communications paid Mobilitie $1.1 billion for 2,300 towers and certain DAS assets. At the time SBA estimated that the DAS assets had free cash flow of $16 million a year, representing about one-fifth of the total cash generated by the Mobilitie assets purchased.
The tower company made the DAS purchase less than two years after selling its DAS business to ExteNet Systems. After purchasing the Mobilitie DAS assets, SBA sold them to ExteNet Systems for an undisclosed amount.
Black Box’s purchase of InnerWireless (announced January 2012)
Black Box is a communications system integrator and equipment vendor. The company bought InnerWireless of Richardson, Texas, to get into the distributed antenna system business.
InnerWireless revenue was roughly $26 million a year at the time the deal was announced. The company said it had provided DAS for a number of Fortune 500 companies across several industries.
Goodman Networks’ purchase of Cellular Specialties’ services division (announced February 2013)
Goodman Networks, a leading infrastructure services provider to mobile network operators, said the purchase of the Cellular Specialties division would strengthen Goodman’s position in three growing areas: DAS, small cells and Wi-Fi offload.
One hundred and eight people joined Goodman Networks as a result of the acquisition. The Cellular Specialties group said it had considered several possible partners, and wanted to join forces with Goodman Networks because of the company’s “culture, leadership, scale, and capabilities.”
BlueStream Professional Services’ purchase of Tempest Telecom DAS assets (announced August 2014)
BlueStream already had a DAS business but wanted to invest more resources in this growing area. When the deal was announced, BlueStream said Tempest probably would not be its only DAS-related acquisition.
For BlueStream, talent was a key part of the Tempest deal. Darlene Braunschweig, former president of Tempest’s DAS and small cell division, is now GM for the BlueStream DAS and small cell business unit. Prior to joining Tempest, Braunschweig managed DAS business development at Corning MobileAccess.
Nokia Networks’ purchase of SAC Wireless (announced July 2014)
Equipment vendor Nokia bought SAC Wireless to increase its ability to provide infrastructure deployment services, and DAS is one of the service areas Nokia wants to develop. SAC Wireless, based in Illinois, offers turnkey DAS solutions, including engineering, design, construction, integration and maintenance. The company builds both indoor and outdoor DAS systems and employs roughly 450 people. According to SAC, there are a finite number of DAS specialists with access to the latest carrier training.
“Wireless carriers have a tendency to hire the “elite” and consistently train these companies by giving them more knowledge and expertise than firms that are trying to break into the industry,” according to SAC’s marketing team. “Aside from SAC, there are only a handful of design-build companies that have gained traction in their DAS regional market, and demand will only continue to grow as wireless technology continues to gain global momentum.”
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