Tales From the Trenches

Sometimes you find a telecommunications site that is a real winner. Other times you find yourself doing battle before a site can be altered to meet your needs. Ingenuity, creativity and determina-tion can be your best defense, especially in the face of enemies such as time and financial constraints.

Can cell-site equipment co-exist with the volatile environment of a grain elevator? How do you best serve urban canyon-dwellers? What if there's no way to build up or out? What happens when your bankrupt landlord tries to write a lease?

Some wireless industry insiders share their own war stories on how they handled these situations with tips that may help you toward victory in your own site skirmishes.

Danger: Explosive Situation By Ian Stock During a recent PCS build-out, Spectra Telecom faced a unique design and construction challenge with one particular site. The good news was that the site offered optimal RF coverage that no alternative could match. The bad news was that the site had the potential of blowing up.

The site in question was a rooftop installation on top of a prairie grain handling and processing facility. The ubiquitous grain dust created an extreme explosion hazard that had to be addressed to make the site viable. An electrical spark easily could ignite the airborne dust, resulting in devastating effects. The environment was classified as Class 2, Division 1 Group F by the Canadian electrical code.

The site layout included an equipment room in a storage space inside the grain-processing plant, with antennas mounted to the roof. The engineers first investigated the viability of designing all equipment as explosion-proof, including all switches, relays, connections, motors and the BTS/RBS radio equipment. Since the BTS/RBS could not be built to such a classification, the only solution was to remove the explosion hazard from the environment by declassifying the equipment room according to NFPA standards.

To ensure the airborne grain dust did not infiltrate the equipment-room environment, engineers designed a positive pressurization system with high-efficiency filters to charge the room with clean air. This system ensured that air pressure in the equipment room exceeded that of the dust-filled outside environment. The design included special space heating requirements for winter conditions because pressurization is required 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. For summer conditions, the site needed heat rejection to dissipate equipment heat outside. The solution was a closed-loop, re-circulating air-conditioning system with a protected outside condenser. Because the worst enemy of condenser units is cooling fans packed with dust, Spectra designed a large-area, low-velocity filtering system to optimize dust removal.

Aside from the usual emergency alarms for temperature, smoke and intrusion, Spectra added operational verification alarms on the air-handling equipment and a pressure differential monitoring system to ensure that the positive pressure conditions are continually maintained within the controlled environment.

The actual construction of the existing structure also led to some interesting design challenges. Masonry walls in explosion-proof environments are built so that the wall material will crumble into small pieces in an explosion. The walls are not rigid, but are built like "Legos without the connections." The bricks are stacked in three orientations and are held in place by self-loading rather than mortar. This required special expertise in how to affix louvers, fans and cable trays to unfastened masonry. To make matters worse, the bricks were more than 75 years old, and many crumbled to dust when handled. Only by extending the connections and greatly spreading the interface surfaces were engineers and builders able to ensure viable connections of these key components.

Once the equipment room was secured, the external connections for power, T1 and grounding had to meet stringent explosion-proof conditions by being sealed in conduit.

When the design was complete, there still was another issue to address: "How do you build in a highly explosive environment?" It was risky to use conventional power tools during site construction. During a scheduled shutdown of the grain-processing plant when the dust had abated, Spectra installed a temporary pressurization system and temporary power allowing for the construction of the permanent installation.

Although construction costs were double that of conventional rooftop sites, the installation was an overwhelming success for the carrier, landlord and regulatory agencies.

Stock is Spectra Telecom general manager, North America. His e-mail address is i.stock@spectra-telecom.ca.

All-Terrain Tactics By Paul Murauskas Geography had a direct effect on the best approach for Rogers Cantel's Quebec build-out. The mountainous terrain north of Montreal is well known for ski hills and lake-front cottages, so the carrier decided to locate relatively short self-supporting structures with omni patterns directly on top of a few strategically placed ski hills. The hilltops offered several advantages: high elevations, existing access, close proximity to power utilities and relatively short structures, which all made these sites relatively quick and inexpensive to build out.

During the later phases of the same build-out, construction prices were high for hilltops even further north. Access roads were built from scratch and often still weren't adequate. The carrier also paid high prices for utilities to run into the site -- in some cases, from a few miles away. But the site worked. Rogers Cantel adapted to its surroundings to effectively build out its sites.

Geographical challenges can make build-out in urban settings just as tricky. Usually, an urban design uses the tallest buildings as the antenna-support structures. The antennas and equipment often are installed on the rooftops. But Omnipoint had a unique challenge with its New York MTA. Imagine what would happen if Omnipoint built sites on top of the skyscrapers in New York. There would be co-channel interference in New Jersey and no coverage at the foot of the skyscraper. Downtilting the signal to where you want it and only where you want it is no simple RF task.

The streets of New York are canyons of steel, glass and stone. More often than not, customers are located at the bottom of those canyons. In New York, wireless subscribers use their phones on the street, in cabs, in theaters or in restaurants. Omnipoint decided to cover the canyons from the bottom. The urban design consists of antennas located at the 35- to 40-foot levels on the corners of buildings every six blocks or so. Manhattan's population density and geography make it well suited for such a design.

This permitted Omnipoint to use small, unobtrusive, 7-inch by 7-inch patch antennas with relatively short cable runs in most cases. The equipment could be located closer to street level, making it easily accessible for installation and maintenance. On a site-by-site basis, construction costs were only a fraction of the costs for local competitors. Omnipoint does have some conventional site layouts on a few mid-size buildings that enable in-building coverage in taller buildings.

The geography of your market will have a direct impact on coverage, cost and the best approach to build-out your system. But no matter where the site needs to be located -- mountainous terrain or urban setting -- solutions are available for every circumstance.

Murauskas is Omnipoint senior product manager. His e-mail address is pmurauskas@omnipoint-pcs.com.

On Maneuvers By Read Ballew Faced with expanding capacity at a key switch facility, the service provider had few options. The switch facility was located in a congested downtown metropolitan area, so it was landlocked, with no space to expand laterally or vertically because of local zoning requirements.

Like many wireless carriers, the company needed to develop an affordable solution that could be implemented quickly. The answer was to dig its way out of the problem, literally. After reviewing all costs associated with various expansion scenarios, the company decided that the most cost-efficient solution was to add space below the existing facility.

To expedite the project and to better control finances, the project team decided not to use the traditional bid-build process. Instead, the company hired a construction manager to bid the project in pieces. This allowed work to begin and be completed faster, and also provided a way to better control costs. Through the incremental process, the client was assured it was getting the lowest cost for the different tasks, and overtime pay was reduced because a shorter time frame was assigned to subcontractors.

This service provider learned some valuable lessons about managing site costs:

* Do not be afraid to think out of the box -- such as expanding downward -- with an incremental design-build approach.

* Cost analyze all options, even those that seem prohibitive. When it comes to time to market, the associated implementation costs may seem quite reasonable.

* Pick your team members wisely. They all need a "can do" attitude to overcome skepticism. Team members must have an incentive to communicate regularly and thoroughly with each other. In this instance, all team members felt a stake in the success of the project.

In the telecommunications industry, he who hesitates may be lost. Success stories will come to those who are able to make speed and financial accountability work in harmony.

Ballew is an associate principal at Carter & Burgess. His e-mail address is ballewrl@c-b.com.

Following Orders By William J. Franklin Site development begins with three main regulatory requirements: coverage/physical location, FAA clearances and local zoning. It is difficult to pinpoint theone most challenging regulatory issue in site design. Most carriers will face several during the build-out process

The site has to satisfy the carrier's coverage requirements for a location that is consistent with its FCC license. Sometimes, for this to work, carriers must file a modification application or obtain consent from an adjacent carrier.

The site also has to satisfy the FAA's (and the FCC's) antenna-structure requirements. This can be automatic (for a low or pre-cleared site) or involve substantial handholding with the FAA staff. For some FAA offices, this may mean months of delay. For example, in one tower case, the engineer had specified a 300-foot tower on the middle of an instrument-approach glide path; he had to redesign the system so that the carrier could relocate the tower.

But facing these typical issues is only the tip of the iceberg. Many carriers will find themselves in other sticky situations. Bankrupt landlords may try to write worthless site leases, but they need approval from the bankruptcy court to get a binding lease in that situation. You can avoid this problem with a title search on the proposed site.

Landlords also have been known to lease ground for tower construction without providing for an easement (legal right of access) to get from the public road to the site. If an intervening landowner is stubborn, your tower is no longer usable. You can detect this problem early on by surveying the proposed site.

But the point is that any one of these problems isn't the problem; they all are. Some sites will go in without a hitch, but every one of these problems must either be solved or avoided before each site goes on the air. A combination of smart engineering and knowledge of appropriate legal and regulatory steps will ease the process no matter how sticky the situation.

Franklin is a practicing communications lawyer in Washington. He represents PCS, cellular, paging, SMR and other wireless applicants and licensees before the FCC. His e-mail address is wm_franklin@compuserve.com.