20/20 Vision

In 1996, Sprint PCS stepped into the wireless arena and announced that it would build a nationwide all-digital network. Three and a half years have passed. The wireless giant has built more than 2,500 towers and spent $5.5 billion in its quest for that coast-to-coast CDMA coverage. Just last month, it turned up service in its 50th market -- Hawaii.

If you talk to Keith Paglusch, Sprint PCS senior vice president of operations, this aggressive build-out has been pretty much what the company anticipated. In fact, much of that expectation came about thanks to the experience of cellular carriers. Or, more appropriately, many of Sprint PCS' current employees are former cellular employees.

That includes Paglusch himself. Paglusch's cellular experience with such carriers as Sprint Cellular and Centel Cellular gave him hindsight before delivering foresight. He knew everything that "didn't happen right" in the cellular experience and how to apply that to the Sprint PCS build-out experience.

"What we are doing is significantly different than what any other cellular company ever did," Paglusch said. "We are building something from the ground up, from scratch ... a nationwide network. None of the cellular companies ever did that."

When cellular launched in the early 1980s, carriers owned the licenses for a variety of markets. The goal was to bring service to those individual markets and make mobile phone service thrive. According to Paglusch, it was only after they successfully built out their markets that they considered buying other markets to knit into a nationwide network.

"With no disrespect, they never had a master plan that would give them nationwide service," Paglusch said. "They have grown kind of piecemeal to a nationwide service. Our plan from day one was to have a nationwide service, whereas the cellular companies grew into it."

That perspective, laced with experiential knowledge, led Sprint PCS to its five key strategies for building each site. Even though the goal was to design and build a single network, it realized that individual components required sophisticated attention to detail if it were to succeed. Further, despite the insights from previous cellular carriers, Sprint PCS knew it had to be flexible enough to modify its processes as it went along. Here are the five key strategies:

RF Design: In each of its markets, the first step was to develop the right RF plan for the site.

"Every RF plan we start from scratch based on that market's requirements," Paglusch said. "We have a baseline of the RF parameters that you use when you go in and engineer a market."

Each market's terrain and demographic characteristics figure into the build-out. The RF plan also takes into account the uniqueness of various venues in that market.

Even though there may be similarities in markets, there is no "one size fits multiple markets" in RF plans. In fact, according to Paglusch, you can't even find a "typical" market.

"It just happens that I am in Colorado, so you have the mountains in Colorado that do not compare to anything else," he said. "In San Francisco, you have the land that is mixed in with all of the water, which is significantly different than any other market. That is why we have done an RF plan per market."

Location: With the RF plan in hand, the company then searches out a willing landlord for each site. According to Paglusch, Sprint PCS takes a distinctive approach when investigating each site. Optimally, the company wants an existing building. Paglusch describes this as an opportunity for the carrier and company. Working with existing structures minimizes the effect of zoning on the carrier.

If an existing structure is not available, the company looks for co-location opportunities. These opportunities present themselves through other wireless competitors or through utility companies. If the first two alternatives do not pan out, Sprint PCS will build its own tower as a last resort.

Legal: The company investigates and completes all of the regulatory requirements, including county and city government mandates. This part of the process includes permitting and working through any necessary requirements for site-specific building. For example, if an existing site has historical-preservation concerns, Sprint PCS investigates and accommodates all requirements.

Although there are similar principles as Sprint PCS goes in and works a market, there is uniqueness within those principles. For example, St. Louis has 99 zoning jurisdictions -- 99 different rules that it has to follow based upon the jurisdiction in which the specific cell site is located.

Zoning: Once you select a site, are you sure it can be zoned? Even once you believe that the site can be zoned, you never can count on predictable cradle-to-grave launches, because each location is unique. The shortest time the company needed for a cell-site launch was two weeks. There were no zoning problems. Onthe other hand, "we have cell sites that we still haven't built because we haven't gotten the jurisdictional approval, so we have been working at them for 3.5 years."

The first two markets that Sprint launched were Fresno, CA, and Spokane, WA. Paglusch said those two were easier because they needed fewer cell sites. Some of the more difficult markets, such as San Francisco, Boston and areas in New Jersey, have been challenging because of zoning, property acquisition and customer expectations of coverage.

Cost: Sprint PCS constantly reviews the cost-effectiveness of its build-out range, from making sure it has hired the right construction company to assuring it can add another carrier easily if it needs to.

In seeking the most cost-effective approach, Sprint PCS changed the build-out process at the midpoint in its build-out to date. When it first started building, it was constructing multiple cities at the same time.

"We actually had a full complement of people in that market, everything from RF engineers to network-design people to property-acquisition people to construction management to network operations, all located in that market," he said.

In the early days, the company was working on all of its markets at the same time. When a market was ready, Sprint would bring it up. According to Paglusch, when you are building a nationwide network, every city is important. So there is no benefit to saying that Boston is more important than Des Moines, IA.

However, after two years of operating this way, the company streamlined the operation. It divides RF personnel dedicated to site development, including construction and property acquisition, into five U.S. regions. The regional personnel are responsible for acquiring property and managing construction activities.

For example, the California region handles Colorado Springs, CO. That region is responsible for handling property acquisition and construction management. When working on that market, the regional representatives spend part of their time in the Denver area aligning themselves with local contractors. Then in the individual markets, the RF engineers and network-operations engineers are located on site.

"Now we are expanding off existing markets," he said. "I think our newer strategy over the last year is right for the time because the other strategy is obviously a lot more expensive."

If Paglusch could cull his cellular and PCS experience into handy advice for carriers still in the build-out phase, what would it be?

"Pick GSM or TDMA," he laughed.

Turning serious, he said, "As a community, we have to learn to all work together to make sure that we are using each other's assets so that we lessen the impact that different zoning communities have on us. We have prided ourselves in not only trying to build a good network cost-efficiently, but we have tried to work as a partner in every one of the markets."