Extenet, based in Frisco, TX, provides infrastructure solutions for mobile network operators, venue owners, government agencies and enterprises. Extenet’s infrastructure comprises over 40,000 small cells on 600 distributed networks deployed and more than 3,700 fiber route miles.
The company has a number of notable deployments including the F1 Circuit of the Americas in Austin, TX, The Empire State Building in New York, and AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX. Mike Alt, Extenet’s SVP of Planning & Engineering, shared his perspectives on wireless infrastructure growth trends with Inside Towers.
-Network Densification – The U.S. Big 3 MNOs have financial challenges with slow revenue growth and heavy capital expenditures for C-band and other mid-band spectrum deployments, so now are focusing on operating expense savings.
MNOs generally specify where they want to go. Alt explains that Extenet is proactive, with internal resources and tools that can indicate where MNOs may experience coverage or densification issues. He expects a wave of 5G network densification activity with deployments of outdoor nodes and small cells to ramp up starting by mid-2024.
“Carriers spent a lot of money on C-band frequencies. Adding spectrum on existing sites was the way to go. With maximum spectrum efficiency by adding C-band to macro sites, carriers pulled back on densification.” Alt expects that toward the end of this year, carriers will start relooking at densification, adding, “In this industry, demand always outstrips capacity.”
-Enterprise Networks – Extenet has Enterprise or venue owners as customers. Alt says that companies like Extenet are seeing an uptick in demand for wireless coverage inside buildings and in the large venue space. Extenet’s largest enterprise customer is MGM Resorts, based in Las Vegas, where the company has deployed wireless infrastructure for public and private networks throughout MGM properties.
Alt points to a recent phenomenon dubbed “festivalization” of sporting events where what happens inside an arena or stadium is now spreading to adjacent outdoor areas where small cells are deployed. He says the revenue upside to the team and the supporting retail locations in and around the venue is “tremendous.”
-AI Impact – GenAI, Chat GPT, and other AI platforms are starting to take hold. Those language models learn from the data being inputted to them, then output highly detailed analyses from that platform. Alt says such analyses can be valuable to a corporation, a business, or a government agency. Unlike IoT, an AI platform on the back end of data collection and analytics will allow the organization to automate business optimization and downstream revenue generation opportunities.
Alt says AI will be an underlying platform for Extenet’s future public and private network deployments and will help the company optimize its network performance while delivering enhanced services to customers. He believes AI will require “a tremendous amount of fiber, data center connectivity, and even the enhancement of, and the rapid growth of, edge computing.”
-Edge Infrastructure – Edge compute is essentially a neutral hub. Extenet works with edge compute providers to deploy hub locations currently used to aggregate fronthaul fiber for small cell nodes. Alt explains that these are, in essence, “mini data centers” that have space for power, cooling, and server capacity to host edge compute environments for MNOs, enterprise customers, and various other use cases.
By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor
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