ADRF keeps focus on Tier 1s but CBRS provides boost in enterprise space

Advanced RF Technologies (ADRF) has been around almost 20 years and much of that time has been spent courting wireless operators, including the Big Four in the U.S. Now, it’s using some of that expertise to deepen its mark in the enterprise market.

Based in Burbank, California, ADRF considers itself to be the largest pure-play in-building Distributed Antenna System (DAS) company. Its product portfolio includes DAS, repeaters, antennas and passive components.

Granted, its traditional carrier business remains solid, but it’s increasingly seeing growth when it comes to the enterprise and public safety, two distinctly different markets, according to Arnold Kim, COO of ADRF. Just this week, ADRF announced it is rolling out support for the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) and LAA bands for its ADXV Series DAS, making it the first DAS provider to support the U.S. 3.5 GHz band and 5 GHz spectrum, according to ADRF.

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Led by President Julie Song, who was named by Fierce as an influential woman in tech in 2017, ADRF also showcased interoperability between its DAS and repeaters and a leading small cell platform at the Verizon Technology Users Forum in Austin, Texas, this week. Kim declined to name the manufacturer in the interop demo.

While ADRF is branching out into the enterprise space, Kim noted that at the end of the day, the carriers have to approve the retransmission in the venues, so having the carrier heritage pays off for ADRF. And with the CBRS ecosystem coming alive in the U.S., that spells more opportunities for enterprises to build their own in-building systems, which is good news in the sense that carriers are no longer paying for the lion’s share of these builds. “CBRS is changing all the rules,” Kim told FierceWirelessTech.

As a mainstay of the in-building niche, it’s incumbent on the company to innovate, he said, and one of its claims to fame is the patented Interference Cancellation System (ICS). ADRF also announced that its SDR-ICS, a high-powered outdoor modular digital repeater with ICS, will add support for the 700 MHz to 2.5 GHz spectrum, thus making the device more flexible for outdoor venues and municipalities looking for coverage improvements for cell phones.