Stadiums, indoor sports arenas and other large multi-use entertainment venues continue to be attractive locations for rollouts of distributed antenna systems (DAS). The massive Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., is representative of that trend as it will soon have a new DAS built by Mobilitie.
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(Source: Businesswire / Verizon) |
The 20,000-seat Verizon Center is owned and managed by Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which opted to go with Mobilitie, rather than the venue's branding partner--Verizon (NYSE:VZ)--for the new DAS installation. The venue accommodates some 2.5 million annual visitors and is the home of the NBA's Washington Wizards, the NHL's Washington Capitals, the WNBA's Washington Mystics, the NCAA's Georgetown Hoyas and various other concerts and events.
Mobilitie--an independent neutral-host DAS provider--will lease access on the new antenna system to multiple wireless carriers. The DAS is slated for completion in spring 2014.
According to Joe Madden, principal analyst at Mobile Experts, DAS is becoming big business, with a global growth rate of 20 percent this year. He predicts that over the next decade, DAS deployments will dramatically expand beyond the current mainstays of stadiums, airports, convention centers and college campuses to include shopping malls, hotels, hospitals and other areas.
For more:
- see this Mobilitie release
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