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Wireless Connections
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Above:
Heinz Corporation President Jim Heinz (standing), and Vice
President Rich Fann review plans to equip a building with cellular
Òears,Ó which will allow people to make cellular phone connections
in buildings where it would otherwise be impossible.
Experts can make wireless connections work better.
By William Poe
These days, staying connected to co-workers, customers and business
information sources often means wireless communications through
cellular phones and wireless Internet-access devices.
But users often still experience dropped calls and problems accessing
e-mail. In fact, wireless communication sometimes leaves its users
feeling a little...shall we say...disconnected.
As it turns out, keeping connected without wires can be relatively
easy. Just ask players and staff of the St. Louis Baseball Cardinals
or a U.S. Marshal in the Thomas F. Eagleton United States Courthouse
Building in downtown St. Louis.
Thanks to some simple installations, they’re now taking advantage
of wireless communications nearly as reliable and as high quality
as those provided through wired connections.
“It has worked out fine,” says Joe Walsh, the Cardinals’ director
of security and special services, who earlier this year supervised
the installation of equipment to allow use of 105 new cellular phones
assigned to staff. “A lot of what we do takes place under tons of
concrete and steel. We have to be able to communicate under there.”
Like the Cardinals, “it’s possible to go from not having wireless
access to having ideal coverage,” says Rich Fann, vice president
of Heinz Corporation, a local contractor specializing in enhanced
wireless installations. Heinz installed the Cardinals’ wireless
gear.
Within the last year-and-a-half, Fann says Heinz workers have begun
equipping “deaf” buildings with the “ears” required for cellular
phone connections. Entire buildings or portions of buildings, Fann
says, can be rendered cellular deaf by dense or metal construction
materials or by building height above 200 feet or so. These buildings
can be given ears in the form of radio frequency (RF) antennas as
small and inconspicuous as electrical outlet switchplate covers.
These antennas are, in turn, connected to hubs that are tied with
fiber-optic cable to a main hub and to an outside antenna.
“We go into a building and conduct a site survey to determine where
the customer is requiring use of the phones; take RF signal readings
in those areas, and design an antenna system to provide coverage
where it is needed,” Fann says.
Jim Heinz, president, says his company also works with building
owners who want to market their buildings to prospective tenants
as cellular-capable.
“This is a technology that’s been around for a while but is now
coming into its own in the midwest as more and more people are relying
on their cell phones for all of their conversations,” Heinz says.
“And you have more and more people sitting at their desks and using
their cell phones rather than their land-line phones. Mobile phones
were developed for use on the open roads but have now moved inside
for much of their use. That use presents certain challenges.”
The Baseball Cardinals found a challenge deep inside the bowels
of Busch Stadium where tons of concrete and steel blocked or scrambled
RF signals needed for office staff, home and visitor team members
who wanted to use their cell phones and maintenance managers who
wanted to communicate with workers on the field, Fann says.
In the new Eagleton Courthouse Building, cellular use was rendered
ineffective on floors above 200 feet, Heinz says, who notes that
cellular antennas typically “look down” from about 180 feet above
street level. A supplemental antenna array installed by Heinz made
it possible for previously “deaf” U.S. marshals to get “ears” inside
the building, he says.
While Heinz installs RF networks to enable cellular phone use, other
companies equip buildings with wireless microwave devices to power
high-speed broadband access for voice, data and video. The devices
typically are installed in buildings that do not have optical fiber
installed or where available copper telephone lines fall short of
bandwidth needs.
“Fixed wireless is a fantastic solution for businesses requiring
local voice service, long distance service, broadband data, high-speed
Internet, video conferencing, real-time multimedia, LANs (Local
Area Networks), and more,” says Mark Salter, vice president of technology
deployment for XO Communications, Inc., which has local offices
in West Port.
“You get large pipe, or bandwidth, into the building with less cost
and less disruption than fiber optic and with greater capabilities
than traditional copper.”
Rich Shank, St. Louis general manager for XO, says only about five
percent of office buildings nationally have fiber connections and
adds that many businesses require more bandwidth than is offered
by copper connections. Fixed wireless, which involves wireless connections
to a fiber optic ring nearest the customer, are 99.99 percent reliable
and can be completed in hours or days, Shank says.
In-building cellular phone enhancements, fixed wireless connections
are both made in the so-called “last mile” of communications infrastructure
between an end-user’s desktop or cellular phone and a communication
provider’s central transport center or hub. The last mile is where
communications are most vulnerable, Salter says.
Any cellular or fixed wireless system operates over certain frequencies
assigned to various operators or carriers. XO (formerly NextLink),
for instance, holds the largest portion of the fixed wireless spectrum
in the U.S. with licenses covering 95 percent of the population
in the top 30 markets, including St. Louis.
The equipment installed in the Eagleton building and Busch Stadium
operates on frequencies leased by Nextel, which has a contract with
the Cardinals and the federal government. So, improvements at Busch
Stadium, Heinz says, benefit Nextel users, not Verizon or Cingular
customers. Improvements can be made to benefit a wider class of
users. “It just depends on who is paying the installation bill,”
Heinz says.
To benefit its cell phone users at Cardinal baseball games, for
example, Cingular Wireless recently installed a temporary signal
booster that will operate through the baseball season, says the
Cardinals’ Walsh. “It accommodates all the fans who use their cell
phones from the stands.”
William V. Poe is principal of Poe Communications, a St. Louis
advertising and marketing communications firm. |
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