As part of a major renovation of New York’s famous Empire State Building, the skyscraper is getting a new distributed antenna system from Extenet Systems Inc. that will provide better coverage for Verizon Wireless and Sprint customers up to the 102nd floor.
Extenet will design, own and operate the DAS, which is scheduled to be turned on in the spring of 2014.
Wireless coverage can be problematic in buildings taller than 20 stories, Extenet noted. Anthony Malkin is president of Malkin Holdings L.L.C., which supervises the Empire State Building, and he added that since many executives and employees “simple don’t use hard-wired phones,” the company sees Extenet’s DAS as “central to our building’s turn-key capabilities.”
The DAS will provide 3G and LTE coverage, and is part of a $550 million restoration and modernization project for the Empire State Building.
—Linksys has introduced a new Wi-Fi router that provides both 802.11n and 802.11ac service; the company says that Linksys Smart Wi-Fi AC1900 router is its fastest ac offering so far, with speeds up to 600 Mbps for those connecting via 802.11n and up to 1,300 Mbps for ac clients.
—Boingo Wireless is also moving ahead with next-Generation Wi-Fi, launching its first Hotspot 2.0-enabled network at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and making it available for mobile carriers and handset manufacturers for testing.
Boingo says this is the first Passpoint-enabled commercial network in the world, allowing for seamless Wi-Fi roaming and carrier offload with an automated authentication process that doesn’t require user involvement. Passpoint is the Wi-Fi Alliance’s designation for devices and equipment that support the Hotspot 2.0 standard. Boingo said the network is live and available for end-to-end testing, particularly by companies already participating in the Wireless Broadband Alliance’s trials of next-gen hotspots.
“We believe that carrier offload will be an important growth driver for Boingo and the Wi-Fi industry at large, especially as standards-based seamless offload methods like this become more prevalent in market,” said David Hagan, CEO of Boingo Wireless. “The sheer volume of users in high-volume, high-traffic locations like O’Hare Airport creates data demand thresholds that can tax traditional mobile networks; Wi-Fi offload via Passpoint creates additional data capacity for carriers without forcing users to jump through hoops.”
“This is a significant step forward for the WBA’s Next Generation Hotspots vision becoming a commercial reality,” said Shrikant Shenwai, CEO for the WBA, which is coordinating operator trials. “Moving from the technical trials to major public hotspots provides more access to more members to test their implementations in real world conditions and should help the industry bring this to market in short order.”
