BAM> (cute)
From the June 7, 1999, issue of Wireless Week
This Isn't Your Father's Station Wagon
By Mark Dziatkiewicz
Bell Atlantic Mobile Inc. maintains its position as the top-rated wireless carrier in the New York/New Jersey metro region
because it has a secret weapon: a souped-up blue station wagon.
The carrier came clean with the details on its roving quality assurance machine after being named the best wireless service
provider in the New York area by New York Magazine in its May 3, 1999, "Best of New York" issue.
BAM credits the specially equipped station wagon--with a quarter-million dollars worth of sophisticated equipment--with
keeping its wireless network in tip-top condition relative to the competition.
"We have what we believe is far and away the most superior grade of service in New York," said Dick Lynch, executive vice
president and chief technology officer of BAM. "Others have been coming out in news articles stating this has been the case.
We just wanted to shout about it a little bit."
The shouting included details on its ongoing roving "blue wagon" quality and reliability program. The station wagon is on the
road from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. five days a week, placing test calls on BAM's and competing carriers' wireless networks.
"We take routes identified by an outside source that define the most likely places our customers would be. [The system] is able
to make a call on everybody's network at exactly the same time with exactly the same duration and measured precisely the
same way," he said.
Lynch is adamant that the testing be objective unlike many of the "evaluations" that put his network in the top spot. Many are
based merely on a few test calls by an individual who may not know much more than "how to work the phone," he said.
"We've gone to great pains to make this a fully mechanized process with an extremely objective set of criteria. I've been
obsessed with making this objective, regardless of the results."
The program isn't anything new for BAM. "We've been doing this for a number of years now. When we started we had only
one competitor. And now we are baselining ourselves against all our competitors on a regular basis," Lynch said.
Every operator that is in business for a while needs to know how its product is performing. This is why most wireless carriers
conduct some type of program similar to BAM.
"It is standard operating procedure in the industry for a cellular or [personal communications services] operator to continually
monitor their own radio signal coverage; virtually every operator does it. But whether they monitor their competitors is
something else," said Richard Levine, a consultant with Beta Scientific Laboratories and an adjunct professor in electrical
engineering at Southern Methodist University.
Levine indicated operators continually search their networks for areas with inadequate radio coverage. These include outer
edges of cells or shadows of tall obstacles such as buildings or hills. "They all monitor signal strength and those with digital
technology will monitor bit error rate, which infers the presence of interference," he added. "Network adjustments often include
increasing base transmitter power, installing radio repeaters or "if there is an area where you are seriously blocked, you may
install a new base antenna."
In BAM's case, its ongoing testing and identification will result in $250 million dollars in network improvements companywide
during 1999--much of it in the New York area. While it is not releasing the numerical results of its testing and has no specific
plans to make public pronouncements a regular part of its process, BAM will keep racking up the testing miles.
"We do this in every market we serve. We keep the gasoline companies happy and frankly we keep our competitors happy,"
Lynch said. "If they had more customers like us in terms of the size of our bill, they'd be extremely happy."
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