Welcome to this week’s round-up of small cell, distributed antenna systems, Wi-Fi and other wireless infrastructure news.
A new report from ABI Research predicts that global LTE investment in base stations and the radio access network – including small cells – will increase by 82.4% in 2013. LTE spending helped to break out of a downward trend in RAN expenditures in Western Europe last year, ABI said, and it will do the same in Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East this year, and Africa next year.
“There are, however, differences in the type of capital expenditure incurred in different regions,” said Ying Kang Tan, ABI research associate. “Operators in the developed markets are already taking steps to upgrade their networks to LTE-Advanced this year. Going forward, amidst skyrocketing data traffic, they will also invest a larger proportion of their RAN spend on LTE small cells, which will yield significant savings on capex in addition to increased capacity for wireless operators.”
Speaking of LTE investment, Sprint Nextel is ramping up its LTE deployment, with another 21 markets recently announced. Those markets include Los Angeles; Charlotte, N.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; and Norfolk/Virginia Beach/Newport News, Va.
The carrier has announced more than 170 markets where it plans to deploy LTE in the coming months, and added a new list of future deployments in places like Portland, Ore. and Orlando, Fla.
Sprint Nextel also noted that it has turned on LTE networks in major markets that it has not yet officially announced, such as New York City; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco. Sprint Nextel is tweeting about its Bay Area “4G” network pre-launch progress here.
And Bluegrass Cellular, a wireless provider in Kentucky, is launching the second phase of its LTE network. The carrier plans to cover 700,000 people by June, making use of its lower 700 MHz spectrum holdings.
The company initially launched an LTE network in late 2012 in partnership with Verizon Wireless, and offers both cellular service and a wireless Internet service that makes use of an LTE Wi-Fi router.
In the small cell space, Tessco Technologies will be a North American distributor of Blinq Networks‘ non-line-of-sight small cell backhaul solution that operates in the 3.65 GHz band over up to 50 megahertz of spectrum.
Tessco VP Bill Moten said that Blinq’s product “provides a unique solution for organizations that build wireless networks and those that require broadband access. More importantly, it extends our commitment of offering the most comprehensive selection of outdoor and indoor wireless broadband radios for point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, mesh, or SCADA applications.”
The two companies said that they will target service providers as well as verticals including healthcare, energy, government and other enterprise sectors.
Follow me on Twitter: @khillrcr. I’m at DAS in Action this week to bring you coverage from the show.
