As originally published in ThinkSmallCell, written by David Chambers

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The DAS and Small Cells industry segments can often seem to be at war with each other. Conference, organisations and products have been renamed, sometimes causing more confusion than clarification. So I spoke with Ken Sandfeld, EVP at SOLiD, to gain a better perspective of where the DAS industry is today and where it’s headed. He shared his experience of that market, explains the terminology and believes DAS has a growing future opportunity.

What is a DAS system anyway?

Think of DAS (Distributed Antenna System) as a macro network architecture shrunk down and deployed indoors or across a campus. Like the macro, it consists of the signal source, central head end location for distribution, remote amplifiers and antennas to radiate the signals to our smartphones. Transport is also similar to the macro as most traditional DAS use a combination of fibre and copper – typically fibre for longer distances between the central location to remotes amplifiers and then coax cabling between the remote amplifiers and antennae.

To read the entire post, please go to the ThinkSmallCell website here.