Business As Unusual

Firms Downtown Scramble to Be Pope Compliant" read one headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the day of the pontiff's January visit. Afterward, merchants were livid about gearing up for the crowds of 600,000 to 1 million that never materialized. One restaurateur grumbled about 2,000 Kaiser rolls that went untouched.

For wireless carriers, it was a different story. Sprint PCS saw traffic on its downtown cell sites increase by 23%, and the metro transit agency spent $40,000 for extra cellular phones and pagers for its employees.

Why did carriers fare better than merchants? Shrewd planning. One example is event sponsorships, which aren't just for building a brand name and creating good will in the community. They also can be a convenient way to ensure that demand doesn't outstrip supply.

"When we furnish phones for events, we provide digital phones, which take advantage of the capacity provided by digital technology," said Steve Dreon, regional manager, network, at Southwestern Bell Wireless in St. Louis.

An active role also can result in a data warehouse that can be tapped when planning for future events. Sprint's NFL sponsorship has helped it learn about accommodating everything from regular-season games to the Super Bowl.

"We've started to develop some characterization about traffic-load offerings during NFL games and the Super Bowl," said Michael Robinson, vice president & general manager of network services. "One of the things that's interesting about that kind of event is that the traffic isn't peaking in just one or two cells that serve the stadium area."

Although the game itself takes only a few hours, the preparations before and celebrations afterward range from days to weeks and span the entire metro area.

"In the Olympics, what we found was the events themselves generated a lot of traffic, but the preparatory construction work also generated a lot of traffic," said Terry Durand, BellSouth Cellular Atlanta engineering director. "For example, NBC rented a bunch of phones from BellSouth Mobility, and we were able to understand how many people from NBC would be using their phones during the Olympics. The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games rented a bunch of phones from us. So using a lot of the information we were able to obtain through our marketing and sales organization for the Olympics, we were able to put some traffic density to those users."

WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDEROptimizing for an event is like designing a new network -- only much faster and with a few more variables. These eight questions can help streamline the process:

*How many people will attend? Good sources for estimates include event coordinators, chambers of commerce, media and even other carriers involved with the event in previous years or in other cities.

"When CTIA came to Atlanta, I called New Orleans and asked them what kind of traffic increases they saw during that event," said BellSouth's Durand. "A lot of times, the carriers will share that traffic information with one another and apply some growth factor." Don't forget to include the number of support personnel such as roadies and reporters.

*Who will be attending? Numbers alone don't tell the whole story. PCS '99 will generate a lot more traffic than a Boy Scout jamboree. Even though wireless has gone mainstream, knowing the types of attendees -- business- people, hobbyists, sports fans -- can help estimate how often and how long they'll use their phones.

*Where are they coming from? If an event has national appeal, signaling traffic could increase because of roamers on the network.

"We can add additional trunks to our switches to handle the increased long-distance and roaming traffic," said Southwestern Bell's Dreon. "A determining factor of the roaming and long-distance traffic is the type of event: local, regional (or) national."

*Where will they stay and play? Even when roaming, wireless often is cheaper than hotel rates, so make sure there's ample capacity and coverage at attendees' hotels. Sites serving tourist attractions also might need additional capacity.

*How will they get around? Event organizers encourage the use of public transportation, so look for shortages in capacity and coverage along bus routes, commuter rail lines and transportation hubs such as train stations. Wireless lets people remain productive even when they're on buses, so make sure they'll be able to make and maintain calls from their hotels to the event site.

*Are there unusual sources of interference? Major events such as the Super Bowl attract hordes of media. When planning for temporary sites, find out where satellite and microwave news trucks will be parked.

"For the Olympics, we had a frequency-coordination committee where we met periodically and discussed what frequencies we would be using and what power levels we would operate," Durand said.

*Is the traffic load distributed evenly? Great coverage isn't the same as great capacity. A temporary site on the roof of a convention center can ensure solid coverage, but if that site is so strong that it's attracting all the traffic in the area, calls could be dropped or blocked. Identifying the coverage areas of temporary and permanent sites helps ensure that one site won't be taking on more traffic than it can handle.

*How did you do? A post-event analysis of usage patterns and traffic loads can determine what went right and wrong. Revisiting that data can be helpful when planning for future events, but its value can diminish rapidly because of wireless' ever-increasing penetration.

MAKING ROOMThe older a network is, the more likely it is to have ample coverage and capacity already in place at the event sites. Cells on wheels (COWs) and microcells are two popular supplements, but the trick is making temporary and permanent sites work seamlessly. That includes changing neighbor lists to ensure that permanent sites recognize the temporary site as an appropriate neighbor.

"It's not just as easy as pulling up a trailer in the middle of a parking lot, plugging in a power cord and starting to do business," said Robinson of Sprint PCS, which has a fleet of COWs deployed throughout the country. "That new cell has to be fully integrated with the rest of the network. So it does require a substantial amount of reconfiguration and optimization just to add that cell."

One way to streamline the deployment of temporary sites is to allow room for them when designing for coverage in a new area.

"The network has to be designed with this temporary cell included, even though it may not always be there," said Phil Hester, Qualcomm director of CDMA infrastructure product marketing. "There has to be a couple of configurations where the equipment will be loaded dynamically to be able to accommodate it (when) it's there and (when) it's not there."

In some cases, it might be better in the long run to deploy new permanent sites.

"If it's going to be a recurring event, it's much, much cheaper just to deploy equipment there permanently to provide the coverage and capacity than it would be to deploy COWs," Hester said.

Ample permanent coverage and capacity also can help avoid Murphy's law.

"There are just some things you can count on," said one engineer with contractor ComTech Wireless. "You can have excellent coverage in 99% of an area, but some very important customer will find that 1%. They just have a gift for it."