Santa Clara Utility-Owned Distributed Antenna System Targets Wireless Carriers

As the wireless industry gets set to ratchet up the deployment of distributed antenna systems, the city of Santa Clara (CA) offers an interesting deployment model. Silicon Valley Power, the municipally owned utility serving Santa Clara, plans to leverage fiber it installed 15 years ago for sub-station connectivity to also support an outdoor DAS that is expected to be used by multiple wireless carriers.

SVP made the decision to install the DAS after the city began to get numerous requests from wireless network operators to install equipment on light poles, said Larry Owens, manager of customer services and communications for Silicon Valley Power. “The requests started to be overwhelming,” said Owens. “We had three or four companies wanting to be on some poles, which can’t happen.” Owens believes the SVP distributed antenna deployment is the only outdoor municipally-owned DAS in the country. But the model would seem to be one that could make sense in other communities that have their own fiber networks.