Over the last several years, wireless operators have been focused on covering the largest public access venues—stadiums, arenas and airports—with cellular services. In these types of venues, it’s all about providing high network capacity to a high concentration of subscribers.
In United States football stadiums, for example, some operators have deployed distributed antenna systems (DAS) with over 60 sectors for each frequency band. This design delivers plenty of capacity to fans for watching video replays and using other data-intensive applications.
Future upgrades for adding more capacity and frequency bands will likely be necessary, but solid foundations for wireless are in place there.
The next frontier for indoor wireless is the mid- and large-size enterprise buildings—office complexes, high-rise apartments and commercial buildings—which are typically privately owned.
The challenges of deploying wireless in private access venues are significantly different in terms of the customers and channels involved, as well as the technical requirements. The most significant difference is the operators’ willingness, or lack thereof, to fund these systems.
The operators recognized they needed to invest in wireless for large public venues because their subscribers demanded service there. But the ROI for private enterprises is less certain.
As such, operator willingness to fund in-building wireless in private enterprises is not as strong, particularly as they pursue other investments such as new spectrum, acquisitions and network virtualization.
The enterprises themselves will likely need to invest in the equipment themselves. This is a much different model, and overall there is no consistent process to help the enterprises know how to acquire and deploy a system successfully.
Even if an enterprise is willing to fund a system, an operator has to provide the radio and backhaul to their network. The process for getting approval from one operator to another is different, making the situation daunting and confusing for many.
Remember, we are generally dealing with IT organizations in private enterprises, not RF managers from the major network operators who are intimately familiar with cellular communications. A significant learning curve stands between these worlds.
Enterprises typically have little to no understanding of cellular. They want it be no more complicated than Wi-Fi – and unfortunately, it generally is. The IT installation companies they know are probably only slightly more knowledgeable about cellular.