WIRELESS CARRIERS BOOST CAPACITY FOR WINTER OLYMPICS
Qwest and AT&T Wireless have nearly doubled capacity in Wasatch Valley, Utah, to handle influx of cellular traffic for Winter Olympic Games, said Sharon Kingman, managing dir.- telecom for Salt Lake City Olympic Committee (SLOC). Target of system design has been to complete 98% of wireless calls, goal that hadn’t been problem so far, although she said system was expected to get its first serious test in Fri. night opening ceremonies. For public safety wireless operations, federal Public Safety Wireless Network Program (PSWN), joint initiative of Depts. of Justice and Treasury, has installed interoperability system linking DoJ and local public safety agencies. “The lack of communications interoperability -- the ability of public safety personnel from one agency to communicate via radio with personnel from other agencies, on demand and in real time -- is a critical public safety problem that is not unique to the Salt Lake region,” PSWN Program Mgr. Rick Murphy said last week.
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AT&T Wireless in last 3 years has added 135 permanent cellphone antenna sites to support general subscriber growth in Salt Lake City market and added 42 more permanent sites to support expected Olympics requirements, spokeswoman said. AT&T Wireless also installed 2 in-building systems on site for additional capacity and has 35 cellsites on wheelers (COWs) in competition and noncompetition areas, she said. “We are working closely to make sure that we have enough capacity with law enforcement and security,” spokeswoman said. Company has GSM/General Packet Radio Service system that hasn’t been used commercially yet but is being made available as closed system with limited access at Games, spokeswoman said. GSM/GPRS service will make debut in Salt Lake City later this year. “The people who have been given access have been carefully chosen” by organizers of Games, she said, and she couldn’t provide more details.
Qwest PCS network installed 300 permanent sites for Games for its new wireless infrastructure and 22 temporary sites to accommodate increase in Olympic traffic, SLOC’s Kingman said. Telecom planners conducted frequency studies, analyses and engineering “from tracking how a broadcaster’s day would go to making sure there were no coverage holes in an elevator or stairwell,” she said. Telephony services have been tracked on hourly basis for factors such as dropped and/or blocked calls, she said. Kingman said that AT&T Wireless GPRS and CDPD systems would be limited to average of 5 users per venue in trial of service, with photographers being among those given access.
Wireless priority access service (PAS), for which National Communications System (NCS) is expected to award contract shortly, won’t be available in Salt Lake. NCS had issued request for proposals following Sept. 11 attacks for wireless PAS that could be activated first in Washington, N.Y.C. and Salt Lake City. Under PAS system, some network capacity during emergency would be set aside for emergency service and national security personnel, who would have varying degrees of priority access to queue up in system to ensure their calls weren’t affected by congestion on rest of network. Kingman said SLOC telecom planners “talked long and hard with a number of constituent groups” about whether there were viable alternatives for priority access during Games. “We prefer to let nature and God choose who will let calls get through,” she said. In end, decision came down to fact that no agencies working with SLOC had asked for service, she said.
On public safety side, PSWN program is providing interconnection for Utah Communications Agency Network (UCAN), Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County and DoJ, said McCrae Smith, FBI telecom specialist assigned to PSWN. System consists of “console patch” that runs through dispatches and allows public safety agencies to talk with each other without upgrading existing systems, PSWN said in program description. DoJ dispatch console has 3 hard wire connections to county dispatch center and 3 circuits to Valley Emergency Communications dispatch center for UCAN, Smith said. He said there were 3 circuits between county and dispatch center that serves UCAN, he said. System comes into play when “a user in the street calls his dispatcher and says I need to talk to another unit on another system,” Smith said. “The 2 dispatchers make the patch complete and the 2 end-users can talk to each other.”
Also as part of providing interoperability, UCAN is providing handheld radios to other agencies that could speak to each other directly on same network. Smith said, however, that public safety agencies were “fortunate” to have already had some interoperability. Salt Lake Police Dept., Salt Lake County and UCAN system all use 800 MHz trunked system from Motorola, he said. Salt Lake Police Dept. essentially is customer of county system, so they automatically have interoperability, he said. While UCAN uses 800 MHz Motorola system, they have their talk groups aligned somewhat differently from other users, he said.
Utah legislature passed bill in 1998 to create Utah Olympic Public Safety Command to unify communications of law enforcement, fire service, public works, emergency management and medical services under one structure, FBI said. On infrastructure side, SLOC summary describes telecom network serving Olympic Games as largest in Utah. It has 10,000 mobile phones, 14,200 wireline phones, 7,000 2-way radios, 4,000 TVs. Qwest is providing 500 payphones at Olympic venues and is deploying Olympic network that carries voice, data, video and audio traffic. Qwest said its 31,000 fiber- mile network was largest ever for Olympic Winter Games.