Dead zone hunting ;

[Dukedog]

Wireless companies test their networks for good cell phone reception.

BYLINE: By Christian Berg Of The Morning Call

BODY:
Rick Opalesky is a high-tech super sleuth.
The Cingular Wireless field technician drives an average of 250 miles a day in relentless pursuit of "dead spots," places where poor or non-existent signal coverage makes cell phones useless.

"You definitely have to like to drive to do the job," said Opalesky, whose routes cover an area from the Lehigh Valley and Harrisburg to Woodbury, N.J., and Ocean City, Md.

As the battle for customers intensifies in the fiercely competitive wireless phone industry, companies such as Cingular are spending millions of dollars to monitor the quality of their networks and improve reliability.

Cingular will spend about $156 million this year to enhance its network in the Philadelphia region, which includes the Lehigh Valley, said Vince Maszczak, manager of engineering and system performance.


The data Opalesky gathers during his daily travels is crucial to helping Cingular make the most of that investment.
"To really know what your network is like, you have to do windshield time," Maszczak said during a recent test drive through the Lehigh Valley. "You can't engineer it from behind a desk."

Cingular's $156 million regional investment is a drop in the bucket compared to the $20 billion wireless carriers spent last year on network upgrades nationwide, said Travis Larson, spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, a Washington, D.C., trade group.

"That's about 40 cents on every dollar that we take in," Larson said.

More than 133 million Americans have wireless phones, according to the CTIA. That's more than 40 percent of the population, and more than twice as many subscribers as just four years ago.

The wireless phone subscriber base has grown an average of 25 percent the past three years, and cell phone usage is growing even faster, according to CTIA statistics. In 1999, Americans logged 147 billion minutes of cell phone calls. In 2000, that number jumped 76 percent to 259 billion minutes.

As the popularity of cell phones grows, service providers are scrambling to boost network reach and reliability.

"As wireless phones have become ubiquitous, people's expectations have gone up in terms of what they look for in service quality and coverage," Larson said. "I think all carriers are looking to play up their strengths. For some, that means advertising low prices. For others, that means talking up their coverage areas."

Verizon Wireless, the nation's No. 1 wireless provider with 29 million customers, spent more than $100 million upgrading its Philadelphia regional network last year, said John G. Ehret, senior engineer for system performance. Nationwide, Verizon spent about $4 billion, Ehret said.

Verizon recently launched a new marketing campaign touting the company's wireless network reliability.

The Verizon advertisements feature a man walking remote deserts and swamps asking the same question over and over again -- "Can you hear me now?"

Sheldon Jones, a Verizon Wireless spokesman, said the company believes its national network coverage and signal clarity are what sets Verizon apart from competitors.

"We feel we have the best network out there," Jones said. "We have real people who are out there testing our service."

In the Philadelphia region, that person is John Hadrick, a former Air Force radio technician who drives 1,700 miles a month checking the network quality of Verizon and its competitors.

Hadrick's Ford Taurus station wagon is equipped with eight cell phones, a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) receiver and $250,000 worth of computer equipment that monitors calls as he drives routes from the Lehigh Valley to Delaware.

Hadrick, who has been working for Verizon since January 2001, said he enjoys his job.

"There is a challenge involved in it," he said. "It's not just driving. It's the processing of the data, and when there's a problem, it needs to be fixed."

Hadrick spends the first two weeks of each month on the road, where the eight cell phones in the back of his station wagon make calls over and over again on Verizon's network and those operated by competitors.

Once calls are connected, the computer-controlled phones repeat phrases such as "All mice eat cheese," "He ran halfway to the hardware store" and "He carved the head out of a large block of marble."

Hadrick said words in the phrases are chosen because they simulate the variety of voice inflection found in a normal conversation.

While Hadrick drives, the computer equipment in his vehicle records data about each call, whether it's difficulty completing a connection or static during the call. The GPS unit tracks the exact route Hadrick drives, so Verizon can pinpoint areas where problems routinely occur.

After spending the first two weeks of the month on the road, Hadrick spends the next two weeks at the Verizon Wireless regional headquarters in Fort Washington. That's where Hadrick crunches his numbers and works with Verizon engineers to improve network performance.

In some instances, problems with wireless phone service are caused by the volume of calls, because each cell site has a limited range and handles a limited number of calls.

If a customer is talking on their wireless phone while driving, that call must be "handed off" from one cell site to the next as the miles go by. If the next cell site is already handling its limit of connections, a customer is likely to have a call dropped even though a strong signal is available.

Call-volume problems are relatively easy to solve, because wireless carriers can boost capacity by adding additional antennas and switches to existing cell sites.

The biggest problem for wireless network operators is geography. Obstacles such as mountains, tall buildings and large bodies of water can wreak havoc with cell phone signals.

"It's terrain," said Maszczak, the Cingular engineer. "That's what kills us more than anything."

Maszczak encountered a geographic "dead spot" last week while accompanying Opalesky on a test drive north along Route 145 in North Whitehall Township.

As Opalesky's Chevrolet Blazer passed the traffic light at Hillcrest Lane and headed downhill toward the Laurys Station, Cingular's signal quickly deteriorated. Within a few hundred feet, the laptop computer that showed the strength of Cingular's signal went from green to yellow to red to black, indicating that no service was available.

Although the vehicle wasn't that far from Cingular's nearest cell tower, the river valley they were driving through blocked the signal, Maszczak said. Luckily, AT&T has a tower in Laurys Station, and Cingular has a roaming agreement that allows its customers to use it.

So, rather than losing a call, Opalesky showed how Cingular's phone automatically switched to the AT&T network when driving through that area. He said most customers would never even notice it happened.

"What we shoot for is a seamless transition from us to AT&T," Opalesky said.

Roaming agreements such as the one between Cingular and AT&T are common in the wireless industry because they help service providers increase their coverage area and eliminate dead spots without constructing new cell towers of their own.

But in many areas, service providers have no choice but to construct new cell sites because existing ones don't cover all the territory.

One local area that wireless providers find difficult to cover is Route 32 along the Delaware River in Bucks and Northampton counties, which is notoriously littered with "dead spots." The steep palisades on the Pennsylvania side of the river make it difficult for cell signals to get into the river valley.

Adding to the problem, Cingular and Verizon officials say, are the numerous historic districts scattered along the river, which make it difficult to find suitable locations for cell towers.

Ellen Webner, a spokeswoman for AT&T Wireless, said network construction is a never-ending process.

"We've got fairly good coverage in Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton," Webner said. "That said, every carrier has gaps in coverage. You build a network, but it's never done. Our goal is to continually build it out and fine-tune it."

Wireless carriers constructed about 20,000 new cell sites nationwide between June 2000 and June 2001, according to CTIA.

"That turns out to be almost 55 a day," said Larson. There were more than 114,000 cell sites nationwide at the end of last year, according to CTIA figures.

But no matter how many towers are erected, wireless service will always face performance issues because of weather, geography and manmade structures such as office buildings and tunnels, Larson said.

"It's important to remember that wireless phones are no more than fancy two-way radios, and that means that coverage will never be 100 percent perfect," Larson said.

For consumers, that means shopping around among various service providers and finding the one that has the best coverage in the areas they go most. Larson said virtually all wireless phone companies give customers a chance to test their product before making a long-term service commitment.

At the Cingular Wireless retail store in Lehigh Valley Mall, manager Tony Sena said new customers get 14 days and 30 minutes of calling time to test their phone and return it.

"Do your traveling and try your phone everywhere you travel," Sena advises.

If a customer comes into the store and wants to use a phone in an area where Sena knows Cingular's coverage is poor, he said he'll tell them.

"I'll definitely tell the customer that I don't suggest signing up for service," Sena said. "We've traveled most of the area, and we know where our phones work and where they don't work."

christian.berg@mcall.com

610-820-6517


GRAPHIC: 2 Photos by Denise Sanchez, The Morning Call and Bloomberg News; **1. RIDING IN A CHEVY BLAZER, Rick Opalesky, a field technician for Cingular Wireless, works with equipment that monitors cell phone signal strength, looking for reception problems. Wireless companies spend billions of dollars + building their networks. **2. A GIANT INFLATABLE cell phone sits outside a Verizon Wireless store in New York City. Wireless companies work to make reception clear.

LOAD-DATE: March 31, 2002



Copyright © 2002 LEXIS-NEXIS, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

[IdiOTeQnoLogY]

great article to post, thanks