CellOnWheels
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Three COWs descend on Lucas Oil Stadium, courtesy of Verizon Wireless (video)
When you think of Super Bowl Sunday, many images likely come to mind: malty beverages, nachos, high-budget commercials and -- oh, yeah -- football. Even amongst us mobile fanatics, however, cellular coverage rarely crosses the mind. Fortunately, that's not how Big Red rolls. The company has brought three of its LTE cell-on-wheels rigs to Indianapolis in anticipation of the Big Game, which is expected to draw 85,000 attendees. Amongst other things, Lucas Oil Stadium is now wired to the teeth with $69 million in Verizon gear to ensure that all subscribers will be able to tweet along with each touchdown, fumble and botched call -- like the Giants / Packers game, for instance. In addition to the COWs, the equipment includes 400 mobile antennas inside the stadium to carry voice and data, along with 600 WiFi stations to support a total of 28,000 simultaneous connections. The folks at GottaBeMobile have an excellent spread of how all this came together, but if you're more of the visual type, you'll find a quick video after the break.[Thanks, Josh]
Verizon Wireless gives birth to first LTE COW in Florida, we're still waiting for a celebratory cigar
They're not keen on providing milk, and we've never found evidence to suggest that Verizon's COWs are indeed happy COWs, but Big Red has welcomed a new arrival to its family: the company's first LTE-equipped cell-on-wheels. Measuring in at 1,080 inches tall and weighing a stunning 24,000 pounds, the self-powered transmitter will begin rolling across Florida to handle demand spikes during major events and to serve as a backup communications solution for emergency response scenarios. Although just an infant, it's capable of handling hundreds of simultaneous calls and data transmissions. Spoken like a thrilled papa, Verizon gushed, "We're very proud of this new baby, and glowing about our 4G LTE services around the state." You'll find all the carrier's cheers in the PR after the break.
AT&T uses COWs to boost SXSW coverage
Three years ago AT&T took a hit at SXSW with terrible coverage due to unanticipated demand on its service from the then-new iPhone. I was there, and while I didn't have an iPhone at the time (I was still rocking a BlackBerry on Sprint) I did see the slow-to-nonexistent coverage iPhone users suffered. But AT&T learned from the experience and began boosting its coverage by using portable cell towers called "Cell On Wheels," or COWs. I got to tour one of these, parked right next to the Austin Convention Center, and spoke with a network engineer and AT&T's Seth Bloom about how AT&T uses COWs not only for events (the company will set them up for Austin City Lights once the SXSW music festival is over) but also when natural disasters wreak havoc on towers and power in an area. For SXSW specifically, AT&T worked with event organizers to install permanent cell towers, doubled the number of COWs and installed a Distributed Antenna System (DAS) inside the Austin Convention Center to provide more coverage (both inside and out) and more network capacity. Inside one of the COWs, I was told they were, in this case, connected to fiber-optic Ethernet backhaul connections which carried mobile broadband traffic to the core network. These improvements, plus several AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots in the Convention Center, Auditorium Shores and along Austin's famous 6th Street helped ease bandwidth issues. Did it make a difference? While there were times when my phone's data connection seemed to slow down at peak hours as people made dinner plans, I have to say there was a marked improvement from last year, and a remarkable difference from three years ago. The tech inside a COW is quite impressive, as it is a fully-functional cell tower which can connect via Ethernet or relay to another tower -- and can be powered by local utility or generator as needed. AT&T's response to what has been an 8,000 percent increase in mobile data on its network from 2007-2010 (according to Seth Bloom) is nice to see as well. While there are certainly times when I'm frustrated with coverage (inside Austin airport I had issues, but outside there were none), it's great the company realizes how important the iPhone experience is to its users at SXSW. %Gallery-119299%
