With many people increasingly relying on wireless connectivity at home rather than having a landline phone, in-building residential coverage is a challenge being met by various technologies – small cells, Wi-Fi and distributed antenna systems.
Excellent in-building wireless coverage is seen as such a valuable amenity that some real estate developers are paying for DAS installations as part of construction, according to Squan, which specializes in in-building wireless. The company is based in New Jersey and has been involved in multiple projects in the prime real estate (and wireless) market of New York City.
Squan recently completed a DAS installation in a new residential building by Gotham Construction, a high-rise in Manhattan at 550 West 45th Street between 44th and 45th streets and 10th and 11th avenues. The new, high-end building is a LEED project consisting of almost an entire city block of of development, including a 31-story tower with about 700 units; a mid-rise building with about 297 units, and two 14-story buildings with another 243 units, situated on on a platform over Amtrak train tracks. The project also includes about 15,000 square feet of retail space.
Squan bills itself as a turnkey telecom provider, with a full DAS integration suite. The company works with all of the national wireless carriers and performs RF engineering, site acquisition, transport, and both indoor and outdoor DAS installations.
Douglas Fishman, director of DAS design and implementation for Squan, acknowledged that small cells have been a hot topic in wireless this year, but pointed out that despite all the attention on picocells, femtocells and other types of small cells, distributed antenna systems still have unique appeal for large venues and buildings.
“The DAS and small cell markets are not exactly the same markets,” Fishman said. “The larger buildings are still going to be DAS.”
In order to cover a building the size of Gotham’s project – about 800,000 square feet – it would take a large number of small cells, Fishman noted. He added that most small cells models are currently wireless provider-specific, further limiting their usefulness in large residential buildings with a mixed customer base – unlike a neutral-host DAS system. Fishman also said that due to interference issues that are common in high-rise buildings, he thinks it is unlikely that small cells will be deployed in buildings taller than 30 floors — the higher the floor, the more likely that a wireless device is interacting with multiple line-of-sight macro sites and that a powerful indoor signal is needed in order to reduce interference.
“For large applications like that, it makes sense to have a neutral-host DAS, especially for residential,” Fishman said.
A DAS installation may be supplemented with Wi-Fi in common spaces, with the building owner leaving individual tenants to decide whether to put up their own hotspots – but, Fishman noted, “Wi-Fi has some challenges in dense buildings and in large apartment buildings – the issues of interference and trying to have all these Wi-Fi hotspots co-existing.”
Another common issue with in-building installations are the size and style of antennas. Will they be above the ceiling or visible, and where will they be located? In the Gotham installation, Fishman described the antennas as flat-mounted and about the size and style of a blank wall outlet, mounted unobtrusively in the closets of the apartments (see photo above right).
Wireless carriers have shown mixed levels of interest in formally extending their networks to residential buildings. The business case is different than, say, a large venue such as a stadium or hotel, or an office building for enterprise where there may be clear-cut benefit to keeping a business customer pleased with their in-building service. AT&T in particular has made DAS an integral part of its three-year network investment plan known as Project Velocity IP, and has made known its preference for neutral-host DAS as a vehicle both for good in-building coverage and the opportunity for cost-sharing with venue owners and other carriers.
At the DAS in Action conference in April, C.J. Maier of Verizon Wireless told an audience that with a limited budget for DAS installations, Verizon Wireless looks at a series of factors – including how often the venue is used, local network traffic patterns, market penetration and most importantly, return on investment – in prioritizing projects. The carrier has evaluated models for apartment buildings, he said, and “we don’t have so much of an ROI model that would work right now” and avoids them.
Stadiums are a more high-value proposition, with consistent traffic, especially compared to something like a low-density rural apartment building, Maier said.
Rusty Stone, of multi-unit dwelling developer Camden Property Trust, said at the conference that with price tags between $350,000 to more than $500,000, a full DAS system is often cost-prohibitive for a developer to take on by itself. But Squan’s Fishman said that the company is indeed seeing developers in NYC take on those costs in order to increase their appeal and livability for customers looking for luxury living.
Having excellent in-building wireless coverage from day one is seen as an important amenity for potential tenants and owners, Fishman added.
“Especially in a high-end building, the first thing they do is walk into the building and try to use their phone,” he said. “Something like 75 to 80 percent of apartment owners don’t get a landline phone, they’re using their cell phone for telecom and data needs. So it’s really essential to have the good service.”
