OUTSOURCING INDOOR COVERAGE

When building a university campus in the middle of the Everglades, one must not only contend with the soaring heat and oppressive humidity, but also the lack of cellular coverage. That's exactly what Wally Hedman, operations manager for Ave Maria University, had to deal with when the 900-student Catholic institution went up 17 miles west of Naples, Fla., in the middle of the Florida wetlands. Though a new town is plotted next door that will eventually house 20,000 people (so far it only has 500 residents), Ave Maria is still off wireless operators' radar screens. The closest cell tower is six miles away.

“During construction, if you were on the wrong side of your trailer, you didn't get cell coverage,” Hedman said. “In five years, everyone will have their towers here, but until then we needed another solution.”

Forcing hundreds of undergraduates to forgo their cellular lifelines would have been a stretch. But Ave Maria had other reasons for bringing robust wireless communications to campus. Because the university lies near the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast, Ave Maria's buildings were built with thick concrete walls to protect against storms. And in light of the recent spotlight the Virginia Tech shooting cast on the need to protect its student body and faculty, Ave Maria needed a wireless emergency notification system and ubiquitous cellular coverage to implement it, Hedman said.

So Ave Maria chose to take matters into its own hands and, with permission from area wireless operators, installed its own active distributed antenna system (DAS) using ADC technology. Hedman had remote antenna units installed in every building and dormitory, all of which connect to Ave Maria's campuswide fiber network. ADC's technology converts the radio-frequency (RF) signals from the handset into intermediate-frequency signals, which can be transported over the university's data network. A main hub at the university's library aggregates those signals, converts them back to RF and send them up to a repeater on the library's roof, which beams hundreds of phone calls to the carriers' closest cell towers.

The result is 100% indoor coverage — something many downtown urban universities can't claim. Ironically, since the distributed antenna system doesn't extend outdoors, students and faculty find themselves going inside to get better reception rather than the other way around, Hedman said. Even when Ave Maria Township grows outward and the planned cell tower is built 1000 yards from campus, Hedman said the university will keep its indoor system running, connecting to the site directly through cable.

“The system will even penetrate concrete up to a certain point,” he said. “I haven't found anywhere inside on campus where there is a dead spot.”

Ave Maria is at the head of a growing trend in building and development. Instead of lobbying operators to bring coverage to their hard-to-reach places and indoor nooks, building owners have taken matters into their own hands, providing the basic infrastructure for wireless access just as they would provide the ducts, wires and pipes for utilities, air conditioning and communications.

“I've got my HVAC, I've got my electricity, and now I have my wireless utility — it's becoming part of the checklist,” said John Niedermaier, general manager of wireless coverage solutions for ADC. “This is a premium property. I don't want to give anyone an excuse not to buy from me.”

Carriers, too, have also changed their tune on allowing customers more leeway in installing indoor systems, Niedermaier said. Though they have the ultimate say on whether any particular wireless system goes live because they own the spectrum, they've started putting greater trust in DAS vendors, such as ADC, that their indoor configurations won't interfere with the operator's WAN, Niedermaier said. “The carriers have confidence that we won't bleed over into their macrocells,” he added.

Traditionally, carriers have implemented indoor coverage platforms, handling the planning, purchasing and implementation of DAS systems, picocells and other targeted solutions, usually at the persistent request of a large customer, Niedermaier said. Indoor coverage was hardly a priority for most operators. The cost and planning required and the limited number of subscribers reached by such solutions skewed operators' efforts more toward enhancing macronetwork coverage rather than indoor coverage. But as 3G services have taken off, operators have become more open to the idea of indoor systems. Most studies show that the majority of 3G data is consumed indoors, whether by a BlackBerry downloading e-mail in an office or a laptop surfing the Web in a conference center. Considering that data is where operators' future growth lies, they are now much more enthusiastic about indoor systems, Niedermaier said.

“At first, operators didn't invest in indoor coverage unless they absolutely had to,” he said. “Now they see it as a necessity for their customers. Otherwise their high-dollar 3G revenue strategies don't work.”

Implementing indoor coverage solutions for every customer is another matter. While operators can accommodate their largest customers — installing picocells and DAS solutions in stadiums, malls and corporate campuses — smaller customers may get short shrift because they don't bring the sheer volume of traffic necessary to justify an investment (though with the advent of enterprise femtocells it's becoming much easier). Consequently, institutions like Ave Maria are taking the lead in implementing those solutions for them. The trend goes far beyond educational institutions, though. Some developers have started building office blocks and skyscrapers with DAS infrastructure in their plans, providing the basic cabling framework that allows both carriers and customers to easily plug in the equipment they need to blanket a building.

Hines Construction is one such developer. It has just completed a 60-story, 1.3 million-square-foot tower block — named for its address, 300 N. LaSalle — on Chicago's riverfront. The building will house Chicago's largest law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, and was designed to meet the U.S. Green Building Council's highest environmental sustainability standards. In short, 300 N. LaSalle is premier real estate, and indoor wireless connectivity, though hardly the norm, could become a key differentiator in the Class A properties, said Aaron Bowman, construction manager for Hines.

The indoor system was planned at the request of Kirkland & Ellis, and when the law firm takes over its 28 floors, ADC remote antenna units will be installed and transmitting. In addition, Hines decided to extend the DAS to the entire building, and though each tenant will have to come to their own agreement with their carrier, the antenna mounts are already in place and the entire building is wired for architecture, down to the basement, where racks have been set aside for operators to install base stations. ADC even managed to bring coverage to the elevators — areas notorious for dropped calls and weak signals — by installing antennas every few floors in cabinets within the elevator shafts themselves, Bowman said. In total, the project only added $150,000 to the cost of development, he said.

Pre-installing wireless infrastructure in a building is a Chicago first, but Bowman said he doubts it will be the last. Wireless coverage will be one of Hines' key considerations in developments in the future. “It's a great ‘A’ to have in a Class A building,” Bowman said.

While the number of customer-initiated indoor networks is increasing, Peter Jarich, research director with Current Analysis, doesn't necessarily believe carriers are wholeheartedly embracing them. A DAS solution like ADC's does expand coverage into a building's innards at little cost to the operator, but it also extends competitors' coverage. By allowing enterprises or developers to build an indoor system, carriers are giving up the exclusivity they would have had if they owned and deployed the gear themselves, Jarich said. Meanwhile customers who go to the trouble and expense don't want to lock themselves into a single operator.

“I don't think we've gotten to the point yet where operators are just letting anyone build an indoor system,” Jarich said. But getting an operator to come in and build one for you is just as difficult, he added. “It's a Catch-22.”