Nextivity discusses its approach to support work from home, distance learning, new deployment scenarios necessitated by COVID-19, and the company’s new Fiber HUB

Nobody could have predicted how COVID-19 would fundamentally reshape how people around the world live their lives and conduct their business. And although the promise of large-scale vaccine distribution forecasts a return to normalcy, many trends initially prompted by the pandemic—working from home, distance learning, increasingly mobile public health and safety personnel, etc.—will likely stay with us for some time. This rapidly evolving situation served to, among other things, reinforce the fundamental role reliable access to cellular connectivity plays in flexibly facilitating our daily lives.

Nextivity provides a wide range of cellular coverage enhancement and extension products tailored to the unique needs of consumer, enterprise, and public sector users. Reflecting on 2020, the company’s Senior Director of Marketing Dean Richmond told RCR Wireless News, “I would be lying to say it didn’t impact the business at all but a good business adapts.” He noted that some categories of in-building coverage deployments dropped off as employees left offices, but this was offset by individuals investing in at-home connectivity to support home-based work and education.

Richmond’s colleague Paul Rigatti, field engineering director, noted that the growth in at-home product sales isn’t flattening out. “We’re continuing to see the need for pervasive and robust signal in the residential space where it is now also a place of business.” Richmond agreed: “We had phenomenal growth in those segments.”

Watch the below video interview to hear more from Nextivity’s Richmond and Rigatti, and click here to browse Nextivity’s in-building, mobile, public safety, and remotely managed solutions.

Similar to the major flux that impacted standard operating procedure for students and those working in office-based positions, essential workers, while steadfastly maintaining their posts, have also turned to cellular-based solutions to protect themselves and others throughout the global response to the novel coronavirus.

As in-person retail was dramatically scaled back, commerce persisted with an emphasis on contactless delivery. As such Richmond noted growth trends related to logistics-type facilities looking to better track and more efficiently handle increased shipping volumes. In the case of brick and mortar retail, the U.S. has seen rapid adoption of contactless pay systems, another use case that depends on reliable, available cellular connectivity.

Rigatti is tracking changes in the public safety and first responder markets. An unfortunate but necessary development has been the rapid deployment of field hospitals, testing sites, and other new types of medical facilities, all of which benefit from connectivity that’s used to track samples and collect and store patient information, in addition to providing vital mobile talk, text, and data services. Similarly, police and fire departments continue to adapt to pandemic conditions while also pursuing pre-existing digitization efforts focused on mobility—time is better spent in the field than at the office.

In addition to maintaining and honing its focus on coverage solutions, Nextivity recently expanded its purview to include fiber. The new Fiber HUB, when combined with the Cel-Fi QUATRA 4000 hybrid active DAS solution, now allows Nextivity and its customers to provide coverage in larger facilities, double available capacity, and connect to signal sources more than a mile away.

“The customer base, the system integrators, have been asking,” Rigatti said. “Nextivity has officially grown into fiber.” The Fiber HUB works with single- and multi-mode fiber and can connect off-air or to a remote small cell. “There’s a lot of demand for this and Nextivity has delivered. And we’re going to continue to see fiber grow in our product roadmap.”

To get a more detailed understanding of Nextivity’s perspective on market trends and expanding product portfolio, engage with the following resources:

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Categories Cel-Fi Quatra, Fiber, IBW Featured Posts, In-Building Tech, in-building wireless, Network Infrastructure, Nextivity