You won’t see commercials for CommScope on TV, but chances are if you have a cell phone, you use their products.
CommScope is a telecommunications infrastructure manufacturer specializing in antennas, fiber optic cables, connector panels, jacks, cabinets and metals for towers. Recently, they have also gotten into the DAS and small cell spaces.
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In this edition of “Digs,” we go inside CommScope’s wireless headquarters in Richardson, Texas to see their latest products and how they test them to make sure they are ready for action.
Phillip Sorrells, CommScope’s VP of Strategic Marketing gives us a guided tour through the Richardson facility, which houses the company’s base station antenna and DAS groups, and is one of five engineering design centers that CommScope operates around the world.
One of the key technologies that Sorrells highlights is the remote electrical tilt capability, which forms an electronic beam from a fixed antenna to provide a more direct path to users.
Sorrells also shows us some of CommScope’s more high tech testing chambers including the PIM testing chamber where they test products for the absence of intermodulation and the environmental stress chamber, which gives them the capability to test products under various weather conditions.
Finally, Sorrells took us outside to show us one of the tallest telescoping towers in the world, which CommScope uses to make sure RF energy is characterized and defined correctly.
CommScope was founded in 1976 and has its main headquarters in Hickory, North Carolina. It is a publicly traded company with over 15,000 employees and an operating income of $935 million.
Sorrells believes CommScope’s employees are some of the most well regarded in the industry. “We have a lot of PhDs on our staff with physics degrees, RF engineering degrees,” he says. “I’m very proud [that] if you go out in the industry that we’re in today and ask people ‘where do you find the core competency of how to build good quality RF,’ people come to CommScope.”
The publicly traded company does business with customers in over 130 countries and has a $5.7 billion market capitalization. In 2013, CommScope had a $95 million net income. They currently own over 1,300 patents and pending trademark patents worldwide.
In 2010, the Carlyle Group paid $2.98 billion to take the company private. It went public again in August, 2013. In January, 2015, they bought TE Connectivity for $3 billion.
For more on CommScope’s products and much more, check out the PCIA Wireless Infrastructure show playlist on the RCR Wireless YouTube page.