According to Infonetics Research, the global distributed antenna system (DAS) market revenue is expected to reach $2.3 billion by 2018 growing at a compound annual growth rate of 3 per cent from 2013 to 2018.
Further, in 2013 the DAS market was led by United States (US)-based companies CommScope, Corning Mobile, and TE Connectivity. Worldwide, 1.2 million DAS nodes were shipped in 2013 and high demand for DAS nodes in North America was the key driver for growth in the DAS market. In North America, DAS market revenue grew by 10 per cent. However, DAS revenue in Asia Pacific declined by 12 per cent in 2013. One of the key reasons for the decline in revenues was higher adoption of time-division long-term evolution (LTE) technology by China Mobile.
In other markets such as Brazil, leading operators are making significant investments in DAS. Operators including Vivo, Claro, Oi, TIM, and Nextel in Brazil have formed a consortium which is establishing DAS in the soccer stadiums across the country to host the FIFA World Cup in June 2014. Meanwhile in the US, service providers are opting for DAS installations along with small cell deployments for enhancing capacity on their LTE networks. For example, US-based operator AT&T is deploying picocells, while its competitor Verizon Wireless is installing microcells and remote radio heads.
Infonetics Research states that value of average DAS contracts comprising hardware (hubs, nodes, remote radio heads, antennas, etc) has increased from $1 million a few years ago to $5 to $10 million.
