Nowadays, 80% of mobile calls are received and sent from partially confined places (office, transport, shopping malls, etc.). That figure alone demonstrates the importance of the quality of indoor mobile coverage for companies in terms of efficiency and productivity. The problem: currently, only 34% of surfaces used by companies have proper coverage! [1] Since the appearance of high environmental quality standards, we often hear about insufficient natural mobile coverage, weak outdoor signals and even poor mobile reception indoors. But concretely, why isn't outdoor mobile coverage strong enough to provide coverage inside office buildings? How can the Distributed Antenna System (DAS) provide a solution?

Mobile coverage of office buildings can be provided in two different ways. Either outdoor coverage or indoor coverage. Indoor coverage can be provided using systems such as the DAS - Distributed Antenna System. These two types of mobile coverage are complementary. The reason? Connectivity faces constraints related to three different standards.

“Obviously, all of these standards are restrictive. However, we must support their progress by offering suitable mobile network offers,” explains Serge Le Potier, Director of Strategy and Analysis at TOTEM. This implies achieving a quality of service that satisfies both building managers and operators' expectations in terms of quality of service. For operators, the quality of  mobile network coverage is a major issue, because it involves their own quality of service and the satisfaction of their end customers. In order for operators to agree to connect to a building’s DAS, at TOTEM, we strive to find the right balance.”

In practice, the DAS is a network of antennas installed inside a building which recreates a mobile network - independent of the outdoor network. Strategically distributed throughout the building according to the connectivity needs of each office, the antennas are connected to the same source via copper or fiber optic cables. What are the differences? “If the antennas are connected to copper cables that distribute the network, it is called passive DAS. Conversely, an active DAS is when you pick up an existing signal that you amplify and distribute around the building in order to improve the indoor mobile network,” explains Nidal Radi, Business Development Manager at TOTEM. In today's offices, we generally have active antennas since for the most part they already have a mobile network, albeit an insufficient one. The DAS makes it possible to tailor the mobile coverage!” 

DAS solves three problems:

In an office building, mobile network needs are different from those of individuals in their homes - except when working from home. “The needs depend concretely on the surface area to be covered, the number of people present at the same time in the offices and the height of the building,” explains Nidal Radi, Business Development Manager at TOTEM. “To ensure the distribution of traffic within each space, the mobile network must be properly managed and optimized. In this sense, a method specific to the building must be found in order to manage traffic, to finely control the coverage threshold and exposure to waves.” A tailor-made solution provides sufficient quality coverage to meet the needs of the occupants, but no more! “Ensuring compliance with the standards in force also means preventing individuals from any unnecessary exposure to waves. And this is the whole point of a DAS which, thanks to the principle of distributed antennas - in particular active antennas, allows us to adjust and refine the network so that each workspace benefits from the right level of coverage.”

[1]  WiredScore Company Study, « La connectivité mobile à l’intérieur des immeubles de bureaux », 2021