DAS is Dead

During the Contracts Panel at the South Wireless Summit, Alan Tantillo, Director at T-Mobile Towers made a rather surprising comment about Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS), “I want to drive a stake in the heart of DAS systems moving forward. They’re not cost efficient and not viable long term. As the Uncarrier and the scrappy carrier, we don’t have the capital to invest and charge down these roads. I’m sure the companies who do have the capital, don’t want to spend it on that because it’s not sustainable into the future.” Is DAS dead? The actual DAS panel earlier in the day didn’t suggest that. Mike Yglesius of Telecom Technology Services, who has DAS systems in over 250 venues, doesn’t think so. “It’s interesting to see the transition between macro sites and DAS. We saw AT&T roll small cells out real aggressively last year, and now they’ve but the breaks on real hard. But I still see a huge need for DAS, and I see it growing,” Yglesius said. Continue reading here.