How does an infrastructure company whose products are designed to be undetectable, become a visible and trusted name in the telecom industry? ConcealFab has done so by engineering quality products and establishing deep-rooted relationships with operators, OEMs and utilities. They offer two areas of expertise: external PIM mitigation solutions for macro site deployments and mounting/concealment solutions for small cell deployments.
Their newest product, the 5G Pole Top 3X AT1K01 Concealment, was designed working hand-in-hand with the wireless operator and Samsung.
“The design is similar to our Ericsson product, but it’s developed specifically around the Samsung radios which are a bit larger and require active cooling,” explains Jonathan Morris, Director Product Line Management. The Samsung concealment includes 2X exhaust fans and a fan controller, to ensure that the AT1K01 radios do not overheat.
This concealment leverages ConcealFab’s proprietary clearWaveTM mmWave friendly material, which eliminates the need to apply film or paint to the radio. “It’s made from a low loss, thin plastic that is tuned to a very particular thickness after much RF testing at mmWave frequencies using the Anokiwave phased array,” says Morris.
Another benefit of this 5G Pole Top Concealment is that “you can add a Sub-6 GHz technology after the fact, so you can bolt on what is commonly known as 4G technology. You could deploy it all at once if you wanted to, but you don’t have to. It’s a separate product but it has that extra functionality,” says Morris. “We also use the smallest volume metric footprint that the equipment will allow and the full concealment covers all the cables, so the average person won’t see anything,” adds Morris.
ConcealFab has been in business since 2007. This close relationship with Samsung, and other radio and antenna OEMs, gives ConcealFab a distinct advantage over its competitors. Working closely with these partners, and delivering consistent engineering excellence, promise to keep this company in the spotlight, in the highly evolving telecom industry, according to Morris. The company has made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies two years in a row.
These close relationships also help ConcealFab meet strict municipality and utility requirements that can impact time to market. “Having that detailed information on the radios helps us optimize our solutions. I know some jurisdictions where your entire site can’t have more than six cubic feet so we do detailed analysis to trim cubic inches,” says Morris.
“The radio manufacturers give us all of the information that we need to properly conceal and mount their equipment. We don’t have to be concerned if the hole pattern is going to line up or if it’s going to overheat. We get all that information on the front end and that all goes into our initial designs,” says Morris. One radio manufacturer thermally tests ConcealFab products in-house, “so you can trust when you order one of our products that it’s going to work right out of the box. You won’t have to do heavy field modifications.”
Morris explains an especially challenging installation with the City of Los Angeles. “We’re one of the few approved suppliers for dual use poles (for telecom and light). We have shipped around 500 poles to them so far. We had to go through their aesthetics committee and all of the different structural and engineering groups. It took about three to four years’ worth of work before we actually started shipping poles,” says Morris.
Longevity is important to ConcealFab. Morris says they’ve subjected their materials to thermal cycling and corrosion resistant testing, to ensure a long shelf life. They choose paints that are just below marine grade so that they last in harsh environments.
Morris says that they keep up with the latest trends by talking with the operators who share their roadmaps and plans for the coming year with ConcealFab. Speaking of roadmaps, ConcealFab is already gearing up for 2021. They are getting prepared for the outcome of the C-band auction and looking forward to the Big 3 Operators’ planned deployments.
Morris has worked with ConcealFab for five years, when they had 25 people at the company. They are now at about 150 and anticipate continued growth. “We’re constantly working together as a team and as a family to accomplish this goal of supporting the operators as they are building out their networks here in the U.S.”
That growth extends beyond the workforce and is tangible. The company now boasts a 160,000 square-foot facility. “When I started our facility was 20,000 square-feet,” says Morris.
Visit ConcealFab’s website to learn more. You can also read their feature in Inside Towers’ recent Fall Showcase.
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