Fixing Hospital Wireless without Invasive Surgery
DAS is expensive to install, maintain, and rebuild. One multi-state health system carries carrier traffic on its existing Wi-Fi instead, at 28 locations.
There is no worse place to lose signal than a hospital. Patients and families are coordinating care for elderly parents or young children, or waiting on news from the surgical floor, or texting from a bedside at 2:00 am – and they need their phones to work. Dense concrete cores, shielded imaging suites, and deep interior floors stop the outdoor carrier network at the door. In most venues, a dead zone is an annoyance. In a hospital, it cuts people off at the exact moment connection matters most.
For years, health systems dealt with the coverage constraints in two ways, and both are failing. Guest Wi-Fi behind a captive portal trades one frustration for another: splash pages, manual passwords, unencrypted traffic, and a network that slows to a crawl for streaming. The alternative, a distributed antenna system (DAS), rebroadcasts a carrier signal indoors, but the standard fix is on life support: expensive to install, expensive to maintain, and perpetually due for another rebuild.
One health system decided to stop rebuilding, retire its DAS, and move to 100% Wi-Fi carrier offload on the Helium Network. Across 23 hospitals, plus pediatric centers, physician offices, and outpatient clinics (28 locations and 10,654 access points in all), the existing Wi-Fi already installed now carries carrier traffic with phones automatically and securely connecting.
Why Hospitals Are Moving Off DAS
For decades the standard answer to interior connectivity problems has been a DAS, a network of indoor antennas that rebroadcasts carrier signal inside a building. A DAS does its job well, but it is tremendously expensive to install and maintain, and it only keeps working as long as you keep upgrading it. The health system was faced with two options: fund another multi-year rebuild of its cellular plumbing, or find another way to carry the load. With expenses being capped, the obvious answer was to weigh alternatives.
Fortunately, there was another option. Wi-Fi carrier offload moves cellular traffic onto a venue's existing Wi-Fi network using Passpoint (Hotspot 2.0): subscribers' phones authenticate automatically with the SIM credentials already on the device – no app, no sign-in, no settings. Offloaded traffic is encrypted end to end with WPA3-Enterprise, and phones keep voice, text, and data working everywhere on campus through Voice over Wi-Fi. Working with Talus Communications, the health system is putting the enterprise Wi-Fi it already owns, the access points already on its walls and ceilings, to work carrying carrier subscriber traffic through the Helium Network. Compared to a multi-carrier DAS overhaul, the model cuts infrastructure costs by 60 to 80 percent.
The Rollout, by the Numbers
The rollout covers 10,654 access points across 28 locations in Missouri, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. The first location began carrying traffic in late July 2026. The large hospital campuses started coming online in the second week of September.
From September 8 through September 14, 2026, those locations carried more than 145 terabytes of data for nearly 12,000 unique carrier subscribers, across more than 750,000 sessions.
One hospital campus in Janesville, Wisconsin came online on September 9. Within days, it was the busiest enterprise Wi-Fi site on the entire Helium Network by data volume, carrying 79 terabytes in a single week. Three more campuses, in Midwest City, Oklahoma, St. Charles, Missouri, and Madison, Wisconsin, sit right behind it. The remaining locations are activating through the fall.
Most of that traffic tells a human story. Based on usage patterns, most of the data appears to come from patients and family members streaming video from their beds and waiting rooms. That is what connectivity in a hospital is actually for: passing the hours, staying in touch, and feeling a little less isolated.
What a DAS Alternative Looks Like for Health Systems
"As a technology advisor and systems integrator, clients keep asking for the same thing: a cost-effective solution for indoor coverage that reaches every corner of their facilities without triggering another multi-year capital project," said Steve Rovarino, President of Talus Communications. "Our Airbridge system leverages a facility's existing enterprise Wi-Fi. Integrating Helium enables that investment to carry cellular traffic, solving the coverage challenge without requiring a complex construction plan
For a health system with an aging DAS, the coverage question changes. It is no longer which side funds the rebuild. It is whether the Wi-Fi already on the walls can carry the load.
This health system joins a growing set of venues and cities, including Celina, TX, Redondo Beach, CA, and New Orleans, LA, using the Helium Network to close coverage gaps without new capital spend. As of September 2026, the Helium Network has more than 18,000 active sites, serving more than 1.5 million people every day.
Want to bring Helium to your health system or venue? Email business@helium.com.
