Sales of active distributed antenna systems are picking up as large public and commercial buildings seek scalable, multi-operator solutions for extending wireless signals indoors.
According to ABI Research, revenues for active DAS equipment--made up of head-end and remote units--should exceed $1 billion by 2013, while another $1 billion in revenues will come from passive DAS, repeaters, cabling and antennas. In addition, the overall market for in-building wireless, which includes equipment and service revenues, is projected to reach $3.6 billion by end 2013.
The active DAS equipment market is especially hot in North America, where it is growing 20 percent annually. "Active DAS is the fastest growing segment of the market today, as large public and commercial buildings need highly scalable, flexible, high-capacity, multi-technology and multi-operator solutions. While active DAS is where the action is, traditional passive DAS and repeaters will continue to see demand, especially in Asia-Pacific and some parts of Europe because of their cost-effectiveness and operator familiarity," said Aditya Kaul, ABI's practice director, mobile networks.
Small cells are having an impact on DAS deployments, particularly in small and medium-sized buildings. In those locales, "small cells could be deployed independently in place of DAS, complement DAS as a hotpot fill-in, or more importantly, feed into DAS replacing the need of large expensive macro base stations, repeaters or even remote radio heads," said ABI.
For more:
- see this ABI release
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