What's Up with Tech?
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With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
Neutral-Host Small Cells: The Future of In-Building Connectivity
Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com
Connectivity isn't just a convenience anymore—it's a baseline expectation that impacts everything from daily operations to property valuation. This eye-opening conversation with Mark from Dense Air reveals why in-building cellular coverage has reached a critical inflection point in commercial real estate.
Did you know 80% of cellular interactions happen inside buildings? It's the underwater portion of the connectivity iceberg that most people don't see until it fails them. As Mark explains, we've entered a new era where carriers have shifted their investment priorities to 5G deployment, leaving building owners responsible for solving indoor connectivity challenges themselves.
The stakes couldn't be higher. Fortune 100 companies are implementing wireless-only office policies, with security-conscious organizations prohibiting employees from connecting to public Wi-Fi networks. Gen Z—now representing a quarter of the workforce—expects flawless connectivity as their birthright. From luxury hotels where guests huddle outside just to make calls, to massive parking structures where coverage disappears the moment you drive down the ramp, the business implications of poor connectivity extend far beyond mere inconvenience.
Traditional solutions like DAS systems work well for stadiums but are prohibitively expensive for mid-sized buildings. Signal boosters quickly hit capacity limitations. That's where neutral-host small cell technology is changing the game—providing a single infrastructure that supports all carriers simultaneously while looking and feeling like standard IT equipment. Dense Air's data-driven approach leverages trillions of data points to identify dead zones proactively, using machine learning to optimize deployments without custom designs for every site.
Whether you're a property owner, facility manager, or technology leader, this conversation illuminates why connectivity has become as essential as electricity in modern buildings—and how innovative solutions are finally making universal coverage achievable without breaking the bank.
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel
Hey everybody, really excited for this topic today as a longtime wireless geek talking the promise of ubiquitous connectivity with a true innovator in the space at Dentser Mark. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm great. Thanks, adam. Thanks for having me. Yeah, looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah likewise, and before that, maybe introduce yourself a little bit about your bio and background, and who is Dense Air?
Speaker 2:So Dense Air is a company really concentrating on solving the in-building and near-building problems that the industry faces. You know it started overseas with quite a different business proposition which we won't get into today. Overseas with a quite a different business proposition which we won't get into today. But let's just say we pivoted to the us and pivoted to in-building in a pretty strong way because we saw a need that was developing in the marketplace.
Speaker 2:Myself uh, people probably hear it as we get going the canadian electrical engineer, telecom background by training and then it really, you know, it gets pivoted into lots of different areas and coming back into the wireless and cellular space, serving, you know, serving businesses and owners, enterprises is actually pretty exciting for me over the last year and a bit here.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, once you're in wireless, it's like the mafia you can't get out. Yeah, started in paging and here we are today. In any case, you know, talk about the high-level business proposition at Dentsair cellular connectivity in commercial real estate environments, hospitality and beyond. What's the big picture? What's the state of play? What's the state of the union as far as meeting our expectations?
Speaker 2:It's a funny thing. There's really a couple different ways to answer that, I think let's start with why should we care at all as a business? The business alone exists because there has to be a fundamental need, and the fundamental need here is people. It's people, it's personal. We need to be able to connect. That's a very fundamental need. We need to be able to go to an event, go to a wedding, take pictures and videos and upload them. That's fundamental, that's an expectation. Now we need to be able to go to a restaurant, have a great meal and when we're finishing that meal, pull up an Uber, pull up a map and say this is how I'm going to the next. Place Right, and the list goes on. Like if you can't do those fundamental things these days, place Right, and the list goes on. Like if you can't do those fundamental things these days. That's problematic. So I think it's really it starts with a very personal thing. It goes up a level, you know, when you think about businesses.
Speaker 2:Many businesses, I guess, have a lot more power now. They're requiring that their employees have the ability to connect all the time. We're working with various, you know, fortune 50, fortune 100 companies that are going wireless only in their offices. They are demanding that they have both cellular and Wi-Fi coverage Right now. Honestly, the employees themselves are demanding it. I can think of two Fortune 5, fortune 10 companies who surveyed their employees in the tech industry and the employee said no, I'm not using Wi-Fi, it's my personal device Not happening. You need to serve this place with cellular. And that's actually what the marketplace is demanding the big law firms, the big engineering firms, it's all the same thing. So more and more, it is really becoming a dual solution of Wi-Fi and cellular. That's another thing that's happening. And then, heck, think about Gen Z. Gen Z is now making up a quarter of the workforce and growing rapidly, and Gen Z is the first generation that is digital first. So they expect there's no such thing as I'm not connected and I'm not able to do it. So when you think about buildings whether it's a hotel, it's an office building, et cetera, obviously the higher ed schools they are having to think about that 10 and 20 year investment in those buildings with those types of people in mind. So it's really great. Again, I started from that personal standpoint, starting to get more business related. These are the types of things that people need to consider One other key point and, evan, I think you'll probably know this that 80% of all calls occur within that building.
Speaker 2:That's a shocking thing. So in some ways, you can think of it like an iceberg. You look at an iceberg and you see the big, huge iceberg. It's like, wow, look at that, that's huge. Well, actually, 80% of it is under underwater. That's the equivalent.
Speaker 2:That's what's happening in the cellular space as well. So if you have that scenario and then you couple it with the fact that carriers can no longer afford to invest in in-building, they spend all their money on 5G. There's capital constraints, heavy op-ex overload, so they're not investing on in-building anymore. So you have 80% of your traffic, 80% of your interactions with these people in mobile happening in-building, while the carriers are at the same time saying I can't afford to invest there. So guess what? That's opportunity, it's a problem, it's a whole new set of buyers, and we can keep going. I mean, the reality is then the buyers like who's buying them? The carriers were buying right.
Speaker 2:So the carriers, they were the ones. They were taking largely their existing solutions, their existing price points, the existing KPIs, existing all that stuff, and saying, okay, I'll come to play. Usually it's one carrier. A single carrier goes serve up a building and periodically you'd have two, and it would be a very rare day that you'd have all three participating in a building. And that just doesn't apply anymore, because suddenly it's the owners, and the owners are just saying, look, I just need it to work, I don't need all your KPIs, I don't need all your other stuff, but when it does work, it needs to be at a different price point. I need all three carriers and it's really changed the game. So it's actually a very fun space to be in right now.
Speaker 1:Lots of change, lots of change, and yet people have been coming at this space with different kinds of solutions for a couple decades, with mixed results. So companies have tried to fix this with different approaches and you know, some good, some indifferent, some haven't worked. Why haven't they all worked as well as we had anticipated?
Speaker 2:I think the well. First of all, this change in ownership and who has to pay. What really didn't start until, say, 2019, 2020. Sounds like it relates to COVID, it really. I guess maybe that helped it along, but really it had more to do with the carrier investment and the 5G rollout and you know when they started bearing the burden of those costs. So I think the impetus, the drivers weren't.
Speaker 2:There is one right as long as the carriers are still willing to pay, why would we change? Why would the owners pick up the buck if their carriers are still playing? So, even though you've been talking about solutions for a while, there hasn't been a need. And then most of the solutions. Well, first of all, let's start with the basics. The solutions can start from the biggest events and venue centers, biggest conference centers. Distributed intent systems have been around forever. They do that very well, very dense set of users, and they're going to be around for a long, long time and the types of solutions we bring to bear do not work in that space. So a DAS world totally exists for very good reasons.
Speaker 2:On the other end of the spectrum, things like repeaters, things that amplify outside signals. Again, they have a very good place for smaller spaces, as long as you have the capacity outside, and that's ever-changing. We're working on, actually, several contracts right now where people have tried the repeater, and, unfortunately, in this case, it didn't work, and we are, you know, ripping all those solutions the. The reality is, though, that there are different solutions, for good reasons. There is no one size fits all, um and really, but there's been a missing element, and that's in the, you know kind of 100k to several hundred k, up to a million square feet, but really, in that middle space, there's been no great solution that's fit the price point.
Speaker 2:So you're talking about people that have tried it. I think the part that hasn't fit is how do you solve for that several hundred thousand square feet at a price point with a solution that gets it all done in a fast and easy way that the owners of a building are willing to get behind. So we can go into more detail there if you want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we'll dive into the technology. Just to first, on the business side, you know what are the consequences of having poor connectivity. I mean, obviously, guests, visitors, employees are frustrated. Connectivity I mean obviously guests, visitors, employees are frustrated. It's difficult to build an ROI on frustration, but increasingly it's like revenue right, there's actual revenue loss. There there's safety, there's security, there's new kinds of devices we're connecting with the internet, of things that have to work for for different reasons. What's? What does the business side look like now versus maybe a few years ago?
Speaker 2:I think for the. Yeah, that's a good question and I'll I'll take, you know, one one direction on that is the businesses. Um, you know, security is is paramount and becoming even more of a discussion all the time. I was on a train with a young consultant on the way from DC to New York before Christmas and he asked about the business and it gave kind of the description we talked about. He said why do I like, why should I even care? I said, well, how are you connecting on your laptop right now? And he said cellular. I said, well, how are you connecting on your laptop right now? Because he said cellular, I said why? Oh, my company won't let me connect via Wi-Fi. Like, I think I'm going to get fired. I said, okay, well, you just made my point.
Speaker 2:For me, the reality is that security is paramount and it's actually a pretty tough thing to accomplish on Wi-Fi Today, to get you know a similar level of security a little bit less, because there's never hardware security in a Wi-Fi world.
Speaker 2:It takes money and it takes effort, technical know-how and again going back to the conversation I just said, the owners in this case they're building owners, they're not tech people, they're not carriers, so they don't know, they don't really want to or know how to take on that level of, you know, bring, that level of security.
Speaker 2:So that is very definitely one thing I think you know. When I think about smart buildings, iot, private networks, you know we are, we're concentrated on the I guess we call it the carpeted space. So think you know, commercial real estate and hospitality, and hospitality we move into higher end mixed use is a very good area for us and in that space, private networking and IoT smart buildings is well. First of all, it's got a bit of a bad rap, lots of failed promises and more than just a black eye. And commercially it's been challenging over the last years, coming out of COVID and you know, return to office being slower, but it's coming back and it will continue to improve. So I think that having a solution that you know enables that and I think in that case, you think you know those devices can connect by Wi-Fi, they can connect by cellular, etc.
Speaker 2:I think back to I was meeting with the chief operating officer of one of the largest real estate firms that you know it's probably five or five or so firms that really control Manhattan, and they're definitely one of them and he said Look, I meet with my peers and I say if you're connecting your building to anything other than cellular, I don't even know if I can talk to you anymore. It was pretty funny. He kicked off this meeting. I've never met the guy and he was very opinionated, and for good reason. So yeah, things are changing.
Speaker 1:They are. Let's dive into the technology side. Everyone in the space has heard about small cells, but let's talk about neutral-hosted small cells. How would you describe them? What are they? How are they becoming the standard sort of go-to approach for in-building connectivity?
Speaker 2:Well, neutral-host, I think there's a technical way to think about it, and then there's just a business way to think about it. The business way to think about it and, by the way, that's one of the things that I think really sets us apart we really look at the customer side first. Who's buying and what do they care about? At the end of the day, our customer is the building owner, and that building owner just needs things to work quickly, easily and across all carriers. And so, for neutral host. For them, that means look, just tell me, I get the carriers right, they work right, and so that's.
Speaker 2:We don't say neutral host to them, but that's essentially what it means. So neutral host allows us to bring, uh, in an easy technological fashion all you know in this case, really, it's three carriers in the US at this point to the table, you know, as quickly and easily as possible. Our technology we try to be technology agnostic, but you know the technology we lead with right now allows us to do a single contract, single agreement with the carriers and quite easily add new buildings as required, which is fantastic. It's not the industry norms. We're able to do things in, you know, like 90 days instead of nine months or 12 months or 14 months. It's fun. So neutral host, that's probably the simplest way to think about it.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, and you know you talk a lot about shared infrastructure. Explain what that means and how it works and why it's, you know, really game-changing innovation for property owners and the tenants.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, the shared infrastructure is really a carry-on to that neutral host conversation. What you need to be able to do is, you know, deploy a single set of hardware. Ideally it looks and feels like IT infrastructure. Right, it's easy. Use the existing fiber. Install a switch. Install, you know, as little as possible. That is different than what they know, you know. Use PoE for those who are technicalists. You know, rather than pulling separate power, you're running your power over the Ethernet cable. Install a single radio, a single device that looks like an access point on the ceiling that serves all three carriers and the. You know the required signal that those need to serve anybody with any phone, wherever they're at, whether they're in the room at a hotel, whether they're walking around on a common walkway at a mixed-use, say, 10-acre, 20-acre site or in their office building. And that's what that allows you to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a great opportunity. So when I walk around Mobile World Congress, I see lots of in-building players and different solutions. How do you stand out and differentiate yourself in this marketplace?
Speaker 2:Well, I think we are an end-to-end provider. So think about it from design, build, implement, maintain. From the design side, we do something pretty unique. We have a very large trillions of data points set of, of, I guess, information on buildings, what the signal inside buildings, both the power and quality or capacity. You know that exists inside every building inside the US and, for that matter, fairground, and so we take that. You know we acquire some of that data, we buy and then we also have our own ability to capture that data and I've got to tell you it's a wonderful tool and it is unique because we get told over and over again how do I get it? Can I buy it from?
Speaker 1:you.
Speaker 2:Can we license it? It's not our business, so the answer is no, but we're happy to work with. We're working with many partners now and it's increasing all the time. So, about next week, to do exactly that is to talk to folks and say, hey look, we don't sell this, but we'll make it available to you. Let's talk about your portfolio. Let's look at your portfolio.
Speaker 2:You don't know where problems exist, right, because the only way that occurs right now is people rely on a word of mouth. So I'll tell you what let's take word of mouth out of it. Let's use a thousand data points that we have across each of the carriers over the last six months and let's look where you actually have issues and then let's solve for those issues. Uh, and proactively, based on what's going on. You know where you're at in your building life cycle. So we we take a very customer-centric approach and then when we look at designing the building, very actually the same thing we use data, so we don't have to do a custom design every time, which is kind of the industry norm. We use machine learning to take what we've done historically and model out exactly what's going to be required for that building that we're looking at now, the scale very effectively use technology to our advantage, allows us to be quite frankly, keep our costs down but at the same time be more accurate than most of our peers.
Speaker 2:And when it comes down to building it. We've got a fantastic operations team come from, running some massive networks for the carriers, et cetera, and you know, and building that and maintaining it is pretty critical. So I think I look, we aren't the only game in town. This is, we aren't the only. In fact, I'm happy to say that if you ever say you're, you know you're, we're unique and nobody's like us, well then we should be a little bit worried that you should see competition and then you should strive to solve it better. And I think we are.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Do you care to call out any? You know sites or examples where you're making a difference. I mean you're in hotels, airports, stadiums. What do you like to call out?
Speaker 2:A couple that are public at this point and others that are just about there. You know it might be the largest garage in the world Millennium Parking Garage in Chicago. It's like four and a half million square feet across four different sites. We haven't rolled out all of it at this point, but we have a great relationship with them, went through a pilot.
Speaker 2:They were thrilled with the pilot and looking to employ a lot more of that garage over the coming months and years. That kind of facility is, you know, critical. Productivity is very critical in places like that.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Patient-based services and physical security.
Speaker 2:When it's that big, I tell you what. Where is my car Like? Find my car? It's a fundamental thing. It is massive. I've been in there a couple of times and if you weren't, aren't with somebody understanding where your car is. So then think about this. The moment you drive into the garage, that's the end of your coverage, for you and for security, everybody. There's nobody. You get to the bottom of the ramp, it's over. So that that's a fundamental problem.
Speaker 2:When you think about garages, uh, sing, uh, hilton, singer island, uh, resort. It's another one that we've announced. Um, you know there's, they're a gorgeous resort down on the coast of florida. Um, they're a gorgeous resort down on the coast of Florida, I guess, to be more precise, and you know they've had, for years, serious issues, customers always complaining, et cetera. We have another one we're working with in California, not announced yet. I mean these places where you walk out the front door to make a call because you couldn't wait to make one inside and what do you see? Three or four other people beside you doing exactly the same thing, and that's a problem for places that charge, you know, pretty high nightly rate People expect. Going back to my. You know how we started this conversation.
Speaker 1:people just expect this to work these days, and if it, doesn't, then you, then it needs to be solved for, yeah, that's a great point. So, looking ahead, where do you see yourself headed this year? Any plans that you can reveal? What are you excited about as we head into the rest of the year?
Speaker 2:So I guess one of the things that I am really quite happy about is we started working with some strong industry players and people that have a lot of properties, dozens and dozens, in some cases, hundreds and hundreds of buildings and it's nice to be in a situation where we're working with them on initial buildings and they are fundamentally behind the solution, saying let's go, let's get these initial buildings going and oh, by the way, here's the list of all of our buildings in the us. Let's start prioritizing, let's use your tool to figure out where we're going. Next, let's figure out where they are in the building life cycle. Every building has its own life cycle. Every company deals with their investment in buildings differently, but then every building has its own as well, which is a unique conversation we could have another day having. But that's what I'm excited about.
Speaker 2:I'm excited about the engagement and the desire for the owners Because, let's face it, this is new. They have not historically paid for this stuff, so they are, for the first time, having the stuff right. So they are, for the first time, having a budget for this stuff, for the first time, having to pay for the stuff the vast majority of them, other than the very largest owners, um, so for them it's an education process and to be able to go along for them you know, kind of arm and arm for the ride, it's fantastic. And doing that successfully this year is what I see happening.
Speaker 1:Well, fantastic. Congratulations on all the success and such an important mission. Good luck and onwards, and onwards.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it Likewise.
Speaker 1:Thanks everyone for listening and watching. Take care, thanks all.