As a resident of the Philadelphia area I have seen this gleaming tower come out of the ground. At 1,000 ft, 58 stories, 1.2 million square feet, it is the tallest building in Philadelphia and among the worlds most technologically advanced. Philadelphia has always been a world-class city and this building is re-defining the tone for this city. The Comcast Center is also going for LEED certification (www.usgbc.com), as its incorporates energy efficient lighting systems based on color programmable LEDS and has the worlds largest tuned liquid column damper for stability and vibration control. MobileAccess www.mobileaccess.com is providing the pervasive cellular and wirelesss coverage to include Cisco LWAPP (Lightweight Access Point Protocol) so that ComCast Management staff tenant ocupants and visitors can effectively use all of their cellular voice and data devices as well as provide WLAN (WIFI), access. Few things to note, as we move into the "Green Energy Efficient era", the use of energy efficient glass marketedly decreases the ability of the cellular, PCS, and public safety signals from entering the building environment. This is just a reality. And to this, most cell towers tend to propagate their sector signals down, not up, so above the 16th or so floor, the signal diminishes greatly. Not good if you are trying to get your email from your Blackberry or need the critical call from your cell phone. Even if you could get a signal, 1 bar of signal strength required to obtain the uplink/downlink drastically reduces the battery life of a device. Having a consistent signal strength of -85dBm wherever you are (translated into 5 bars), will allow the user to have the maximum battery life on their voice and data device. MobileAccess co-located the AP (access points) in the wiring closets or IDFS (Intermediate Distribution Frames) which did not diminish the aesthetics of this open atrium building enviornment. A small low profile antenna used for the distributed antenna systems is often preferred versus dipole antennas for AP(s), at least from as mentioned an aesthetics standpoint. In a mixed use environment like this providing a 802.11a/b/g, 850MHz, (cellular), 1900 MHz (PCS), and 800MHz, public safety managed service solution is ideal and provides the best TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). All the services are optimized for the correct signal strength and performance, i.e. engineered RF. Finally, we have come to a time when pervasive cellular, PCS, Public Safety, and WIFI just needs to be provided to tenants, visitors, and staff. You would not think of constructing a new building today with room air conditioners, it is centralized. Same here, the value of the real estate will be estimated by how well you provide the necessary communications in our mobile soceity in a cost effective and managed solution.
