Mar/Apr 19 - ChannelVision Magazine

venues that have poor cellular reception in their buildings and need a solution to amplify cellular signal strength. This is an excel- lent opportunity to expand sales to an existing client base, leveraging existing skills. For example, Pacific Services, a San Clemente-based system integrator, was engaged to install a public safety system in a new four-story multi-use building in Los Angeles that housed apartments, retail space and a two-level under- ground parking garage. The owners needed to comply to National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) regula- tions for emergency responder radio coverage in order to get a Certificate of Occupancy. Because the building owners were concerned about the safety of their tenants in the below- ground parking garage, Pacific Services also recommended testing cellular coverage while testing the emergency responder frequencies. “When tenants are in the park- ing garage at night, even though there are cameras in the garage, having a cellular phone connection makes the garage much safer for them in an emergency,” said Gary Greening, vice president of opera- tions at Pacific Services. “After sur- veying the garage and finding no cellular coverage down there at all, we went ahead and surveyed the rest of the floors of the building and found that there was spotty cover- age everywhere.” In addition to the public safety system, the building owners signed off on Pacific Services’ recommendation to install an active DAS hybrid, Cel-Fi QUA- TRA, to resolve the poor cellular reception. The installation of the active DAS hybrid took two days to complete and was done at the same time the public safety sys- tem was installed. “The best part is the customer and the tenants now have peace of mind, and the reality is this solution might save a life,” added Greening. “Cel-Fi QUATRA is one of our leading solutions for small to medium-size clients in venues under 500,000 square feet, and it’s been very success- ful. We have been able to install QUATRA for 50 to 60 percent less than the cost of other proposals the clients received.” In the Dallas/Fort Worth area, Troy Waldrop opened T-Datacom 12 years ago and has a long-term contract with one of the local cities to install all its structured cable. A couple of years ago the city started asking Waldrop for help with the poor cellular reception it had in many of its government buildings. Waldrop did not originally have a good experience trying to solve this problem for his customer. “We installed five BDA pas- sive DAS in the city, but I thought they should have gotten a better signal for what they were paying. Thankfully I found Cel-Fi QUATRA active DAS hybrid,” said Waldrop. “It provides cellular signal that is 1,000 times stronger than the other systems, and it took just a day to install it in the first fire station using our cabling skills and some great support and training from the manu- facturer’s field engineers.” Waldrop also installed Cel-Fi QUATRA at an energy plant. City officials were so pleased with the results, they are now signing off on installing Cel-Fi QUATRA in two more fire stations, as well as their other buildings. Waldrop even decided to change the name of his company to Cellular Signal Solutions to reflect his business expansion. He ex- plains: “This is a tremendous busi- ness opportunity because now not only do we offer structured cabling, but we offer cellular signal solu- tions. People are becoming inter- ested in the cellular world. I think it’s perfect timing.” o Dean Richmond is the senior director of marketing at Nextivity. Mobile & Wireless Cel-Fi QUATRA is a scalable cellular coverage solution used in most any building type. It covers up to 50,000 sq. ft. per network unit. Solutions are available for single or multi-carrier deployments. 50 Channel Vision | March - April, 2019