WASHINGTON-You may have heard of a CoW or even a CoLT, but how about Mercury? Probably not. And before you start trying to figure out the acronym-it isn’t one. Mercury is the code name for Qualcomm Inc.’s portable base station.
So what makes Mercury different from a traditional cell on wheels (CoW) or cell on light truck (CoLT)? Its size. While CoWs and CoLTs are small compared with 300-foot towers, neither could fit on a helicopter or in the back of a Chevrolet Suburban. But Mercury can and has.
In Roman mythology, Mercury is the messenger of the gods due to his speed. In the wireless world, Mercury can make messages-i.e. communications-happen where they normally can’t.
Until September, Mercury sat in Qualcomm’s testing lab-an idea borne out of a request from the White House for a cellular bubble that could travel with a presidential motorcade in case commercial service was not available. But, four days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, administrators remembered the Mercury project-and suddenly Qualcomm pulled Mercury out of the lab and into the real world. Within hours of getting the call, Qualcomm had loaded Chairman Irwin Jacobs’ plane with equipment, phones, generators and three engineers. Once Qualcomm arrived at the scene of the hurricane, the company was told to set up Mercury at the Exxon-Mobile refinery in St. Barnard Parish, La. Since there were no roads to the refinery, Mercury was loaded onto a helicopter.
“That is when we realized how unique Mercury was. CoWs and CoLTs wouldn’t fit on a helicopter,” said Mark Koro, Qualcomm’s senior director of government affairs.
Koro was in Washington last week briefing policy makers on Mercury’s Katrina success and urging them to consider deploying Mercury base stations across the country in case of another emergency. Koro said Mercury systems can be up and running in just 20 minutes, and officials can use the system if they have their handsets tuned to Mercury’s dedicated channel. So instead of waiting days to get communications up and running-as officials did during Katrina-Mercury could have communications up in a matter of minutes. The Mercury system can use either satellite or microwave transmissions for backhaul.
Deploying Mercury ahead of a disaster would be key, Koro said, since handsets must be configured to work with the system. Since no one was prepared to use Mercury during Katrina, Qualcomm had to bring its own handsets. Koro believes that having commercially-available handsets would make Mercury more attractive to government because of the cost and ease-of-use advantages. With over-the-air programming, handsets could be kept current with Mercury’s capabilities.
In addition to convincing government officials at all levels of the usefulness of Mercury, Qualcomm must also convince CDMA carriers to allow one channel to be designated for use by Mercury in an emergency situation. During Katrina, all of the carriers were immediately willing. Koro believes that carriers would support Mercury since it would only be used when commercial service is not available.
So how did a company that no longer builds infrastructure or handsets become the go-to guy for new government technologies? When Qualcomm sold its handset and infrastructure businesses, it retained the right to work for the government to develop cellular architectures upon request, explained Koro.
Qualcomm would not comment on whether Mercury is in service to the president.
