SOLiD showcased its Genesis DAS solution this week at the Verizon Technology Users Forum in Austin, Texas. The distributed antenna system targets enterprise customers that are not large enough to attract carrier investment for a DAS.
“The enterprise is now at a point where they’re willing to spend on those things,” said Ken Sandfeld, president of SOLiD Americas. “And Verizon is looking for solutions that will make that possible.” Carriers don’t have the budget to build a DAS in every building that wants one, but if the building owner will pay for a system, the customer stays happy and the carrier increases its coverage.
Sandfeld said buildings that are between 100,000 and 500,000 square feet, which he calls the middleprise, are the most likely to invest in DAS. This is where he sees demand developing.
“It is the fastest growing space, it’s the largest space, and it’s where there’s a lot demand for solutions,” Sandfeld said. “In response to that, SOLiD is continuing to innovate new solutions.”
Earlier this year, SOLiD announced a multi-operator, multiband virtualized radio access network solution called Genesis Radio Access eXchange. Sandfeld said this product is still in development without a launch date, and that carriers are not quite ready to be part of an open, virtualized RAN solution.
But the DAS hardware piece of SOLiD’s Genesis solution appears ready to go. Now SOLiD will start marketing the product to target vertical markets, including hotels, hospitals, campuses and commercial office buildings.
