No, the Smithsonian Institution isn’t reverting to a coal heating system. Instead, wireless carriers facing what could be more than one million attendees for Friday’s festivities — in addition to a large crowd for Saturday’s National Women’s March protest — are deploying outsized equipment to supercharge their networks and ensure everyone stays online throughout the weekend.
Temporary towers
Wireless carriers have been using mobile cell sites, often called COWs, or cell on wheels, for decades. But the gear set up on the Mall dwarfs the kinds of antenna trucks you’ve probably seen at concerts or other large gatherings.
At a temporary Verizon (VZ) site next to the National Air & Space Museum, the setup resembles an outdoor astronomy exhibit: a large ball on a metal column around 40 feet tall connects to a series of cables running to a diesel generator designed to keep things online if the electrical grid cuts out.
The contraption is a multi-beam base station antenna that can transmit 12 separate cell signals, each of which can be angled up or down remotely. Verizon has seven of them up and down the Mall.
“Let me tell you, they’re expensive,” said Mark Funka, director of system performance at Verizon Wireless. He said Verizon designed its network upgrades for a crowd of from 1 to 1.8 million.
The carrier also says it’s upgraded its capacity across the Washington area by 500%.
At AT&T (T), the most visible addition to its network at the inauguration will be the seven “Super COWs” it has parked along the mall.
The one I inspected next to the National Gallery of Art features four “drum set” multiple-beam antennas, each with 20 times the capacity of a standard single-beam antenna. The antennas are wired to a semi-trailer’s worth of network equipment.
Each antenna sends out 20 beams over multiple frequencies for a more precise distribution of bandwidth, explained Brian Harrison, a technical communications manager. He said AT&T began its inauguration planning two years ago and expects a crowd of 1.2 to 1.8 million. In a statement, the company said it spent $15 million to increase its LTE capacity by 400% in the D.C. area.
T-Mobile (TMUS) and Sprint (S) have also made their own permanent and temporary upgrades. T-Mobile says it has increased LTE capacity on and around the Mall “by nearly 1,000% since last year.”
Sprint, meanwhile, says it has doubled capacity on its 1.9 GHz cell sites around the Mall and nearby Metro stations.
Only-in-Washington issues
Adding coverage for an inauguration differs from augmenting service at other large-scale events like music festivals or the Super Bowl in two important ways.
First, even if Trump’s crowds fall short of the record 1.8 million people who witnessed President Obama’s first inaugural in 2009, they will still vastly outstrip attendance at any music or sports event.
Put another way, the most recent Census estimate put the entire daytime population of Washington at just over one million people. Most sane workers with jobs anywhere near the Mall will take Friday off, but it’s still going to be a bad day to find a seat on Metro.
And as a look at the fences and cameras now set up across the Mall and Pennsylvania Avenue NW will attest, security is much stricter. Verizon’s Funka said that starting at 1 a.m. on Friday, the Secret Service will begin inspecting the company’s installations, opening every cabinet before sealing them all and shutting everything behind fences.
Rob Pegoraro.
Culled from Yahoo News.
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