DAS makes sense for the enterprise even if carriers won’t pay for it
Distributed antenna systems and in-building small cells have traditionally been used by carriers to keep enterprise customers happy, and now those customers are starting to purchase mobile infrastructure on their own. The enterprise market for in-building mobile infrastructure has tripled within the last two years, and is set to grow to $3 billion by 2021, according to the analysts at Mobile Experts. Companies that install these systems say business owners are reaching out to them directly, asking for help.
“They’re losing tenants and losing clients by not having good service,” explained Bobby McClung, CEO of systems integrator AWS Communications. “The building owners are desperate for some kind of service.” McClung said the need is particularly acute for buildings too small to merit carrier interest. “We’re getting a lot of requests for the smaller venues, 150,000-500,000 square feet,” he said.
The challenge, of course, is making sure the carriers will connect to a system once it is in place. Companies that decide to invest in mobile infrastructure stand a better chance if they work with integrators who are known and trusted by the wireless carriers. Integrators often start with one “anchor tenant,” the carrier that invests to build the system. Then the integrator can bring others onto the system, before or after it is live.
“Our role is really in perpetuity, on behalf of the building owner and manager, to go after the other carriers,” explained Thomas Crotty, CEO of Wireless Information Networks, which considers itself the nation’s leading RF integrator within the multitenant commercial space. WIN focuses on structures of at least 800,000 square feet, and has built its business on carrier-funded DAS. Now, carriers are pulling back.
“We’ve seen a falloff to some level with regard to class A and building funding,” said Crotty. “The only real player in the marketplace today funding this is Verizon. It used to be just Verizon and AT&T.”
Crotty is confident AT&T will return to the in-building market, and in the meantime his company is successfully bringing AT&T onto Verizon-led DAS in multitenant office buildings. A much bigger opportunity exists for WIN and other integrators as building owners buy more of their own equipment.
“There is a clear return on investment for an enterprise to buy equipment for in-building mobile coverage,” said Mobile Experts senior analyst Kyung Mun. “The average hotel stay costs $144, and at least 30% of guests would refuse to stay in a hotel with poor 3G/LTE coverage. In this example and many others, we can quantify the value of mobile coverage.” Clearly, building owners and their agents are starting to recognize this value.
“The building owners or the property developers are coming to us, even property managers in commercial lease structures,” said McClung. “The bulk of our work over the last 18 months has been in the enterprise space.”
