Enterprises with some wireless repeaters face $20K/day fines
Today, company executives at Walls Industries live on their cell phones. But five years ago, they couldn’t get a signal indoors at the concrete-and-steel Dallas-area site where the work and specialty apparel maker is headquartered. So the IT group installed an in-building wireless repeater system that satisfied users just fine — but eventually sent AT&T on the warpath.
AT&T is Walls’ mobile network operator, and its nearest cell tower is more than a mile away from Walls headquarters. Five years, ago, Walls asked AT&T for help in getting signal indoors. But the carrier “basically said that wasn’t a business they were in at that time,” explains Tom Felton, Walls’ CIO.
So Felton sought the help of a third-party integrator, which installed antennas aimed at the AT&T cell tower on top the building and several repeaters and related equipment to boost the signals indoors. Users were happy.
Flash forward about four years. AT&T, now building out its 3G network in the area, discovered that signals from Walls’ in-building system were interfering with the new macro network. So the carrier came a-calling.
“The AT&T representative knocked on our door and said, ‘your system is infringing on our 3G signal. If you don’t shut it down, we’ll sic the FCC on you,'” Felton recalls.
“They told us that ‘if the FCC finds you in violation, you can be fined up to $20,000 a day.'”
Those who hold spectrum licenses from the U.S. government have the right to yay or nay equipment that runs on their networks. In this case, the repeater installed was not AT&T-certified, though it was FCC-approved for maximum power output and other specifications. Getting the appropriate certifications is a point of confusion for a number of end customers.
Needless to say, Walls was under the gun to find a solution quickly to keep wireless service afloat for its 65 employees and avoid the steep fines.
The company turned to Cellular Specialties Inc. (CSI) headquartered in Manchester, N.H., to conduct a wireless building survey. CSI offers both services and products — including repeaters that have been certified by AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint-Nextel, T-Mobile and AllTel to operate on all their networks.
“They were very knowledgeable; they knew all the ins and outs of AT&T’s network” and how to keep Walls out of trouble, says Charlie Brown, the company’s system administrator.
CSI installed what Walls calls an “industrial-strength” repeater last summer that covered the entire building via a distributed access system. The previous solution “required so many repeaters, boosters and amplifiers, sometimes we’d have to shut down because one moving part would fail and the whole thing would domino,” Brown says. “This one is iron-clad.”
And A-OK with AT&T.
