ABI Research projects a 14% compound annual growth rate for the in-building wireless market in the next few years, increasing from a forecast $4.4 billion market in 2014 to more than $8 billion by 2019.
North America will dominate distributed antenna system investments. ABI pegged sports venues and transportation facilities as the verticals which will garner the most DAS investment, while the vertical including shopping malls, healthcare and hotels/reports come in just behind. ABI said that those verticals currently account for about 2/3 of DAS spending.
The second-largest market today is the Asia-Pacific region, which is expected to grow at an even faster rate than the overall DAS market. Nick Marshall, principal analyst at ABI, said that although Asia-Pacific accounts for less than a quarter of the total market today, it is expected to grow to more than 25% by 2019 with a compound annual growth rate of more than 20%. Marshall added that active DAS systems will account for more than 60% of the revenue during the 2014-2019 period.
—Aerohive Netoworks Inc., which specializes in controller-less W-Fi, has filed for an IPO. Read more details from its filing in our coverage here. Aerohive is positioning itself as offering a Wi-Fi solution with simple, unified management software and a single architecture, with a lower cost and easier deployment because of its cloud component.
–The Wireless Broadband Alliance has produced a comprehensive definition of carrier Wi-Fi, outlining “the requirements that a carrier Wi-Fi network needs to provide a consistent user experience, have fully integrated end-to-end network capabilities and offer advanced network management.”
“Carrier Wi-Fi is currently an industry buzzword,” the WBA said, adding that “the term has lacked a universally recognized meaning among operators, vendors and industry bodies alike. A new set of guidelines, led and published by the WBA, aims to provide that common vision to the entire industry on what constitutes Carrier Wi-Fi, drilling down to the details of the functional requirements of the network, analyzing what is available today and discussing what work still needs to be completed.”
Almost 20 companies collaborated on the carrier Wi-Fi project, including AT&T, CableLabs, China Mobile, Cisco, Comcast, Ericsson, Huawei, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, Qualcomm, Ruckus Wireless, SK Telecom, Time Warner Cable and Towerstream, among others. The WBA said it will liaise with industry bodies including including the 3GPP, Broadband Forum, GSMA, NGMN and the Wi-Fi Alliance regarding this list of critical carrier Wi-Fi capabilities; the WBA is also sponsoring a carrier Wi-Fi summit at Mobile World Congress.
–Radisys Corp.’s Trillium small cell software has been chosen by NEC Corp. to enable its LTE small cell network of femto, pico and microcells with both FDD and TDD-LTE support. NEC, based in Japan with multinational customers, provides IT and telcom solutions to enterprise, government and telecom service providers.
“We have selected Radisys as a strategic partner to enable our outdoor picocell product portfolio as it is the leader in small cell software, bringing expertise in deploying LTE-TDD and LTE-FDD,” said Katsumi Tanoue, assistant general manager of NEC’s mobile radio access network division. “After our initial picocell deployment to enable our customers to deliver robust outdoor coverage, we plan to leverage Radisys’ TotaleNodeB solution across our small cell product portfolio, thereby lowering our time-to-market.”
—Major League Baseball Advanced Media has installed Apple’s iBeacon technology at the first two MLB parks for opening day 2014. There are now 65 iBeacons permanently installed at Petco Park in San Diego and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
MLBAM said that fans will be able to use iBeacon technology, which relies on Bluetooth Low Energy for indoor positioning, with its At The Ballpark app’s 2014 update, and that more details on the app and capabilities will be available in March. More than 20 MLB ballparks will eventually have iBeacons installed.
–Ethernet software and services company Cenx Inc. has included support for large-scale small cell deployments along with macro cells in the newest version of its flagship service orchestration software.
