It’s 5:15 pm and your 4:30 conference call is showing no signs of closure. Your son’s Little League game starts across town at 6:00, but you’re chained to your desk, watching the traffic pile up outside and imagining the look on his face when he steps up to the plate and scans the crowd looking for you.
Starting the call at work on your smartphone and finishing in the car is the logical solution, but you can’t do that if you don’t have reliable cell service in your office. Many people don’t, and companies are realizing that there’s a definite cost to low bars. Sales people miss important calls, smartphone voicemail is inaccessible, and employees leave the office when they want to use their phones. Many companies have Wi-Fi and let employees connect their mobile devices, but most smartphones still don’t reliably make voice calls on Wi-Fi.
IT managers are getting a crash course in cellular and radio frequency as they try to answer the call for connectivity. Here are three things companies should keep in mind as they evaluate solutions to boost the bars indoors.
1. Small cells usually support just one carrier. If your company gets a small cell from Verizon Wireless, AT&T customers will not see their service improve. This could change if the carriers get more comfortable sharing equipment, because the companies that make small cells are developing products that can support more than one operator. Some small cells include a baseband processing unit, meaning that they can increase a building’s connectivity on their own, while others connect to controllers or remote baseband units. Remote baseband units can be shared by more than one carrier, but such a scenario might require the company to install two different kinds of small cells onsite.
2. Some buildings can get what they need from a cell signal booster. Cell signal boosters are typically less expensive than small cells. They receive, amplify and then rebroadcast existing cell signals, but they do not include a signaling source and do not connect to carriers’ core networks. They can be a good solution if the signals outside the building are adequate. One signal booster can support all the major nationwide carriers and some can cover a building of up to 100,000 square feet in size. Some cell signal boosters also connect to Wi-Fi routers in order to improve Wi-Fi service and cell service at the same time.
3. Wi-Fi calling is coming. The equipment that will enable mobile calls in your office may not be a small cell or a signal booster, but a new smartphone. Right now a limited number of phones support voice and text over Wi-Fi, but the number is growing. T-Mobile US, Sprint, Republic Wireless and Google Fi all offer calling and texting over Wi-Fi on some phones, and AT&T and Verizon are not far behind. Most companies have Wi-Fi, and smartphones can already use Wi-Fi to access the Internet for email, social media, and many messaging services. Adding talk and text could complete the picture and reduce the need for extra equipment to boost the cell signal.
