Welcome to this week’s news on Wi-Fi, DAS, and small cell deployments.
Qualcomm has been named an official technology partner of Major League Baseball, and is partnering with the league’s interactive media and Internet company to improve wireless coverage within MLB stadiums.
Qualcomm engineers will provide in-stadium assessments and planning for Wi-Fi, 3G and LTE; MLB Advanced Media said that some ballpark reviews are already in progress and will continue over the next two years. Qualcomm will recommend solutions and conduct testing to ensure connectivity.
Meanwhile, Chicago-based DAS provider ExteNet Systems said its distributed antenna system at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., has four U.S. wireless carriers signed on: AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nexel and MetroPCS (which T-Mobile USA is trying to acquire).
Broadcom and SK Telecom launched what they’re calling a “5G” Wi-Fi router. According to Broadcom, its new 5G Wi-Fi is “three-times faster and up to six-times more power efficient than previous generations of Wi-Fi” and uses 2.4 GHz spectrum; the company said it is leveraging technologies across its portfolio to drive adoption of the new Wi-Fi capabilities.
Despite all the hype around small cells, and the expectation that 2013 is going to be a banner year for the technology, small cell baseband chip maker Mindspeed Technologies announced this week that it is dialing back expectations for its fiscal second quarter of 2013 (ended March 29). The company had estimated that its revenue would likely be flat or up or down 2% from the $38.4 million figure in its first fiscal quarter, and adjusted its numbers downward to reflect a decrease in revenue due to slower shipments of 3G small cells than it had expected – on the other hand, it said its revenue from LTE small cells will likely double from the first quarter of its fiscal year. Mindspeed now estimates total net product revenue to be between $35.1 million and $35.5 million.
ABI Research said this week that Mindspeed ranks first in small cell baseband market share in the overall market, but when public metrocells are broken out as a separate category, vendor-specific ASIC products have the top market share, followed by Freescale and Texas Instruments (TI ranks second in the overall small cell market).
“This is because vendors such as Huawei, Ericsson, and Samsung and to some extent, Nokia Siemens Networks, all are using ASICs in their designs, particularly in their picocell and microcell products,” explained Nick Marshall, ABI principal analyst.
ABI Research said it expects to see two different roadmaps for baseband processors for small cells: cost-effective, high volume sales for baseband SoCs for consumer and enterprise femtocells; and chips for public access or metrocells with higher prices and more features, in smaller volumes.
“We believe the differences between enterprise and consumer small cell equipment and public access small cell equipment are such that the definitions of the SoCs that equip them will diverge with the differing price and performance points bifurcating the market,” said Marshall, adding that Broadcom’s announcement of RF transceiver integration on its 3G BCM61630 reflected the first step in that direction, as well as an industry first for small cells SoCs.
Also of note this week, Costrotta Construction Management Inc., which provides site acquisition and construction for wireless and fiber infrastructure, as well as in-building and DAS projects, announced that it signed investment agreements with private equity firm KLH Capital and closed on a $5 million line of credit with Comerica Bank.
Robert Bradley, Costrotta’s CEO, said that KLH Capital “[brings] critical expertise to our board of directors, financial expertise to supplement our finance department, and a mergers and acquisitions team that will enhance our ability to close quickly on transactions as we grow.”
Costrotta is headquartered in New Jersey, with operations in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland and North Carolina. The company said that the newly available funds will be used for growth in its existing markets as well as opening new locations.
