DigiTel Networks, the new telephone company bringing fixed long distance and local wireless telephony and mobile data services to market has completed an important first phase in the lead-up to its January 1st launch in 6-months time.
Paul Hutton-Ashkenny, president of Systems Resource Group (SRG) and DigiTel, said that as a first step, precise positioning of the wireless network infrastructure was a major part of the process essential for the carrier grade voice telephony and broadband services that will be offered by DigiTel. To that end he said, engineers from US based Axcera, who specialize in transmission equipment and systems for the broadband wireless industry, have been working with SRG engineers to ascertain the optimum sites to place the radio antennas for service on New Providence and Paradise Island and later on Abaco and Grand Bahama.
In keeping with environmental policy, construction of new towers will be limited. DigiTel’s wireless network infrastructure is environmentally friendly, able to take advantage of high buildings and, thanks to stipulated license requirements for both SRG and Bahamas Telecommunication Company’s (BTC), existing BaTelCo radio masts.
Andrew Houson SRG’s field operations manager said they worked with the Axcera engineers to geographically pinpoint the placement of their infrastructure by painstakingly mapping radio signal strength and gathering other data in pre-selected areas of the island.
“Axcera has a mathematical infrastructure modeling programme that they use to predict cellular-style coverage for this type of technology in differing areas. The model generates a coverage map based on certain geographic parameters entered, such as the height of the antennas, the frequency, the down angle of the antennae, the GPS co-ordinates, the temperature, that sort of thing. They came here to fine-tune the model with real live data analysis from our market.”
The field operations manager explained that a vehicle was fitted with a radio device unit and other job related equipment including GPS receivers hooked up to laptops. The receiver that had the GPS fixed antennae was gathering a coordinate and signal strength every second and over 100,000 points of data from just that system alone was harvested. The team mapped the planned installation sites and was able to confirm or ascertain the optimum locations for installing the antennas for the wireless network infrastructure.
“We’re now testing the microwave backhaul which is the way in which the various cell-like sites will communicate with the core network. We are deploying some test antennas around the island and transmitting data across the link to ensure that quality and reliability meet standards.”
In a Research and Development lab in the United Kingdom, DigiTel Networks intended infrastructure has been duplicated to further sample total product reliability.
“We built a network in the UK to mirror the technology that we’re deploying here to stress test our configuration with carrier-grade voice service. It is a stringent quality assurance programme that I’m pleased to say DigiTel passed with flying colours,” said Chief Technology Officer, Mark Livingstone.
“The call quality was excellent based on evidence received on batches of calls. It was a staged lab that created a network that replicated devices that would be on the edge of cells to purposely create a worse-case scenario. Compressed data was also tested – CODEC testing is to ensure that we were getting the needed carrier-grade quality regardless of which CODEC we used and how much compression we put over it.
Further testing is ongoing including in Texas where one of DigiTel’s vendors, Cisco Systems is based. The object is to perform systems integration of the CLASS services that DigiTel will offer consumers, such as Caller ID, Call Waiting etc.
“At the end of the day our residential and corporate customers aren’t going to be concerned with the infrastructure,” said Paul Hutton-Ashkenny, “only the quality and reliability of the products and services they receive. But the successful completion of this Phase One ensures our capacity to begin delivering to our mission statement which is to be recognized as a leading, next generation voice and data communications’ solution provider throughout the deregulating Caribbean region.
We have completed Phase 1 that indicates positively that our networks will have the capacity to deliver a whole range of carrier grade services, including voice, data and broadband through a network of wireless towers.”
SRG’s Licence grants exclusive rights to a band of radio spectrum that will allow deployment of an Internet Protocol (IP) wireless infrastructure to allow wireless connectivity in voice and data via regular telephone handsets or handheld Personal Digital Assistants (PDA’s) and other computing devices.
The twelve million dollar price tag to build and develop the wireless network will sink money into the Bahamian economy, create work and full time employment and build a leading edge, state of the art wireless network that will put The Bahamas’ telecommunications infrastructure on par with every other jurisdiction in the world and in some cases, ahead of other countries. This is in accordance with Government’s clear recognition and stance that world-class telecommunication infrastructure is a driver of economic and social development.
DigiTel Networks is a trading arm of Systems Resource Group (SRG), a much respected and successful data integration and communications company of some 13 years long-standing in The Bahamas. SRG competitively bid for and won, a 15-year telecommunications license that effective January 1st, 2004, will permit it to offer the first and only competitive voice services in the country to those historically offered by BTC, (previously known as BaTelCo.)
The Public Utilities Commission (PUC) issued the license as a first step in the Government’s de-regulation plans for the telecommunications sector. SRG was judged to be the “most meritorious” of the final three that reached the final bidding process.
