A new report predicts that the distributed antenna system market will ship 2.5 million DAS nodes in 2017, or nearly doubling its current rate of sales.
Read more about small-cell deployments in the recent RCR Wireless News report “Small Cells, Big Future.”
The Mobile Experts report notes that future DAS growth will come from “new vertical markets, with hospitality, healthcare, university and high-rise buildings becoming a more significant part of the market.”
“The DAS market will roughly double in size over the next five years, with a dramatic increase in the combination of DAS with Wi-Fi, public safety radio and LTE networks,” noted the report’s author Joe Madden. “In addition, when high-capacity small cells such as picocells are more widely available, we can expect small cells to replace macrocells as the primary signal source for indoor DAS systems.”
Wireless carriers are increasingly looking towards DAS and other small cell solutions to help increase capacity of their cellular networks in high-traffic locations that have typically been difficult to cover with larger, macro-cellular towers. However, there are still cost concerns that are keeping some cellular operators from investing energy and resources into the small cell market.
These smaller cells typically cost more to cover a given market segment than larger base stations, which comes at a time when many carriers are just now beginning to roll out next-generation wireless networks. Those initial deployments have seen a race for coverage that plays well for marketing as operators attempt to lure consumers to these more efficient networks with the promise of widespread coverage.
Analysts have noted that small cell deployments are likely to ramp up once carriers begin to go back over their initial cellular coverage plans to provide greater capacity in areas that are seeing greater consumer usage and higher demands on traditional cellular infrastructure.
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