A conversation about densification with Ken Sandfeld, president of SOLiD America
The below is only a summary. Download a transcript of the complete interview and the full report “Massively densified networks. Why we need them and how we can build them.”
Most of large venues have indoor infrastructure. The challenge now is to reach the medium-sized venue – the middleprise. We talked to Ken Sandfeld, president of SOLiD America, about the technology and business models that can address this challenge.
“At SOLiD, we believe that [distributed antenna systems] and small cells will become one hybrid, simplified solution. We might call it a hybrid DAS solution. I’m not sure what the term’s going to be; however, there is going to be a new term and a new combined solution. These solutions will be deployed by third-party owners, neutral hosts as well, as they work with people who own buildings, [and] don’t want to own, manage or deal with these systems,” Sandfeld said.
“It does start changing the business model for the operators. The operators don’t want to devote a lot of resources. They just want to manage their service. They want to manage their [key performance indicators] and guarantee that their licensed signal is not being interfered with, and that they can manage their customers. Ultimately, all the parties need a win-win solution. In order to do that, you need to have one simplified architecture. Multiple, noncohesive systems are no longer affordable. It’s just not attractive for anyone to deploy that,” he added.
Reaching the middleprise is the main challenge for indoor coverage. “The ecosystem will stay very similar, but we’re going to be able to touch projects that just weren’t feasible in the past, and that’s really the goal,” Sandfeld said.”When this will happen, the ecosystem will mature. The operators will be able to mature, because they’re looking to grow their services and revenue base from the users. The system integrators will expand and grow in their capabilities to the enterprise, and the enterprise will get much smarter about how they deploy these systems, as soon as they’re more capable and the business models are ready.”
We further discussed the topic of densification during our recent webinar. Download the webinar.
