PCIA preview: 5 industry trends to watch

Emerging technologies, the capital markets, workforce issues, public safety, changing business relationships and merger activity will all be on the agenda next week at PCIA’s Wireless Infrastructure Show. Ahead of the wireless infrastructure industry’s annual spring show, RCR Wireless News takes a brief look at five current industry trends.
New suppliers, new customers
Business relationships are changing as network operators and infrastructure providers tap new suppliers, and vendors find new customers outside the traditional wireless ecosystem. Ericsson is working hard to create content delivery and software solutions expected to find markets beyond telecom and wireless. Nokia is trumpeting new technologies for the cable industry and Google is approaching infrastructure providers who have previously served the wireless carriers.
At the same time, carriers and tower companies are tapping new vendors as they turn their attention to small cells and distributed antenna systems. Airspan’s microwave backhaul equipment is showing up alongside Nokia’s base stations on Sprint’s small cell installations. Modus, a regional site acquisition, construction and RF specialist, is deploying small cells for Verizon Wireless in San Francisco.
New vendors are also making an appearance on the tower side of the business. Software firm Siterra, a division of Accruent, is speeding builds and amendments with field reporting and tracking software. Hazon Solutions, Etak Systems and a number of other companies who pilot unmanned aerial vehicle systems are also becoming an important part of the industry.
Capital is leaving the country
From AT&T’s towers in Mexico to American Tower’s $1.2 billion acquisition in India, the biggest spenders in wireless are increasingly moving money abroad. Vendors who want to keep up are grabbing their passports and taking their expertise and experience into new markets.
For two of the three biggest tower companies, revenue from outside the United States in increasingly important. American Tower said 33% of its first quarter revenue came from outside the U.S., and for SBA Communications 14% of site leasing revenue was internationally sourced.
Consolidation continues
For the most part, the wireless carriers are getting out of the tower business, and so are some of the smaller tower owners. Within the last few weeks, Vertical Bridge has agreed to buy 275 sites from Alaska Wireless Networks and 200 radio towers from Alpha Media. Crown Castle bought Tower Development Corporation, which owned 336 towers in the United States and Puerto Rico.
Tower valuations and the state of the capital markets are set to be discussed at The Wireless Infrastructure Show next week at a panel moderated by Clayton Funk of Media Venture Partners. Funk is scheduled to be joined by several tower company executives as well as analysts from MoffettNathanson and Raymond James.
Consolidation is also impacting the network equipment market in the wake of Nokia’s purchase of Alcatel-Lucent, which was a longtime supplier to Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility. Nokia is a supplier to Sprint and T-Mobile US. With Huawei and ZTE excluded from the U.S. market for political reasons, the combined company faces Ericsson and Samsung as its major competitors.
Recent mergers and acquisitions will be the topic of a panel discussion, with moderator Jonathan Atkin of RBC Capital Markets set to be joined by representatives from UBS Investment Bank, Q Advisors, Vertical Bridge, American Tower and Accruent.
Small means small
Small cells have been a theme at The Wireless Infrastructure Show for several years, and as technology evolves operators are seizing the opportunity to deploy small cells that are truly small. Less equipment on poles in the public rights of way makes for an easier zoning process and often a less expensive deployment.
Centralized radio access networks are one way that network operators are reducing the amount of equipment on utility poles, rooftops and street lights. A recent review of six outdoor DAS and small cells case studies found that two large U.S. deployments used C-RAN, and one international deployment involved a base station hotel shared by two carriers.
Network upgrades: what’s next?
In general, tower companies are seeing more amendment activity as opposed to new construction, meaning carriers are upgrading their networks by adding equipment to existing towers instead of building new ones. Much of that amendment activity depends on the roll out of new network technologies.
For the two largest U.S. carriers, LTE deployments are mostly complete and wide scale deployments of “5G” technology are still three to four years away. Sprint and T-Mobile US continue to expand their LTE networks, although Sprint has said it wants to devote a significant amount of its limited capital to small cells.
Much of the tower work in the year ahead may be prompted by the need to add new antennas to cell sites. Operators are using carrier aggregation to make the most of their spectrum, and Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile US have both said they will deploy 4×4 multiple-input/multiple-output antenna technology. For now, operators who are deploying 4×4 MIMO are ahead of the curve since smartphones do not yet support the technology, though Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X12 LTE modem does supports 4×4 MIMO so device makers now have the option to build phones that can take advantage of it.