In case you missed it, the wireless brand ANDREW is back, and it means business. In early 2025, Amphenol completed the acquisition of CommScope’s outdoor wireless networks (OWN) and indoor cellular solutions (ICN), and the ANDREW brand, well-regarded in the wireless industry was reborn as ANDREW, an Amphenol company. And at MWC 2025 in Barcelona in early March, both its innovation and positivity were easy to see.
“We are very excited. The OWN and DAS businesses comprised the original ANDREW [operations] back in the day,” explains Upendra Pingle, general manager of indoor cellular networks at the newly-established Amphenol business. “For people like me who joined 20 years ago, it is very nostalgic and exciting. It is good to be able to go back to the brand, as part of a company that is high-tech and high-growth, which is willing to invest to grow.” And which is willing also to grow through innovation, it might be added – in light of its stand display at MWC, which captures a portfolio of antenna tech that pushes boundaries in terms of simplicity and sustainability.
Speaking with RCR Wireless, Pingle highlights the firm’s supply of componentry into new open RAN systems for indoor connectivity. Open RAN is a modish telecoms topic, of course, and it is everywhere at MWC; momentum is building around it, suddenly, as a technology concept outside of just traditional macro-scale public networks – in large venues and enterprise campuses, as well, where new 5G features hold value. “A lot of times when people talk about open RAN, the context is outdoor [public operator networks]. But it [applies just as well] to indoor environments – and when I say indoor, I mean venues, campuses, stadiums, airports and any confined space.”
This is the company’s traditional heartland, of course. “The majority of cellular traffic is consumed indoors. The focus at ANDREW has always been to make sure there is enough strong indoor connectivity to support it,” says Pingle. He adds: “Schools, colleges, parking lots – often these spaces are underserved by cellular, and open RAN presents an opportunity to serve those types of markets… It creates a [way] for that in-building connectivity to be expanded.” Indeed, it is like a no-brainer opportunity for IT managers to re-set their network foundations for new digital change initiatives. There are savings everywhere you look with open RAN, says Pingle – plus better simplicity and variety.
He explains: “Our customers are large public venues, enterprises, and operators. The benefits for all three are straightforward. Public venues can save a tremendous amount of space – like 80 percent. They can also make huge energy savings because they don’t have to power-up and cool-down bulky equipment. So there are immediate cap-ex [and op-ex] savings there. Enterprises, in buildings of 50,000 or 200,000 square feet, can run open RAN on standard commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers, just as they have run Wi-Fi for decades – so their IT teams can deploy it. And operators, wanting to mix-and-match systems, get the best of innovation from different vendors.”
The timing is neat, too. Historically, the midpoint in a cellular G-cycle, as it were, is when the focus switches away from just public macro-network rollouts to ramp-up in-building network investments, and then to network densification after that – suggests RCR Wireless to Pingle. And by common consent, it is about half time currently in the 5G game – right? He responds: “Yes, and the enterprise market is picking up for both public networks and private networks. That is where we see a lot of new demand for in-building connectivity. And open RAN will be the impetus for them to invest – because it [works like] Wi-Fi on COTS servers – to make 5G the fourth utility for in-building [operations].”
