AT&T’s Super Cell On Wheels Deployment Might Prevent Wireless Meltdown

Reports indicate that there will be plenty of people gathering at the nation’s capital to witness the inauguration of Donald Trump. Most of these people will certainly use their smartphone or tablets to capture this historic moment. This means that there is a chance for a wireless meltdown due to the increased traffic.

It is to be noted that wireless meltdowns happened during the last two US President inaugurations. However, reports indicate that a new equipment is being installed around the capital in order to avoid the wireless meltdown. AT&T recently stated that they are ready for the big inauguration event and they have already completed the installation of temporary towers along the National Mall.

These towers are called as Super Cell on Wheels (COWs). The technical communications manager for AT&T, Brian Harrison said, “We have set up seven of these COWs on the National Mall. Our objective really is to make sure that we have got plenty of capacity across the entire mall.” It is said that other providers have also set up some temporary towers on the National Mall for their customers.

Reports indicate that AT&T has spent approximately 15 million and conducted two years of planning and testing for the deployment of the latest equipment. More than 50 engineers were hired by the telecom company to work on this latest venture, and AT&T officials said that new towers would make sure that there will be no wireless meltdown during the inauguration.

“They are utilizing a very high capacity type of antenna,” Harrison added. “You notice up there at the white antennas, they look like a cheese wheel, and what they do compared to previous inaugurations and regular cell sites, normally a cell site has an antenna and it forms like a pie-shaped pattern, and everybody who is out there in that pie is being served by that one.”

He further said that, “These antennas take that same pie shape and they break it into tiny little slivers of pie so you can get a lot more radio resources for the users who are actually out there. It means at the end of the day, people are going to be able to stream easier, get their calls through, do anything they want to do by us having the additional capacity. We actually have COWs that are from 2nd [Street] all the way to the Lincoln Memorial.”