The largest public high school under one roof in America now has 4G wireless service thanks to Cobham Wireless, AT&T and several other companies — for free.
In-building coverage at Evanston Township High School (ETHS) in Illinois was spotty. Evanston Police Department Communication Coordinator Perry Polinski said in the announcement, “Problems over the years with in-building radio coverage to support public safety emergency and first responders necessitated the need to investigate ways to increase coverage within the High School.”
Cobham installed a system based on its intelligent, digital Distributed Antenna System (idDAS). Cobham Wireless worked with Radvisory 5G, as well as RFS, Galtronics, Graybar, Chicago Communications, and Fullerton Engineering, to design and deploy the coverage system, which connects to AT&T’s nearby cell tower. All parties contributed equipment and services, with AT&T donating a significant amount of testing and engineering time, so that the system, and subsequent five-year maintenance, was fully financed at no cost to the school.
The system provides reliable, high quality AT&T in-building coverage, for ETHS’s 4,000+ students and staff. It also improves public safety communications for ETHS’s 50 member safety team, which uses AT&T’s ‘Push to Talk’ service.
“The project has tackled the school’s connectivity problems. The project has helped forge closer links between the school, AT&T, local police and fire departments, and the wireless industry,” said ETHS CFO Mary Rodino. The police department is pleased with the improvement in radio coverage, according to Polinski.
The success of the project sets a benchmark for the upcoming FirstNet public safety broadband network rollout, the parties say. The idDAS system at ETHS can be upgraded to support FirstNet Public Safety LTE, as well as other future band deployments by operators. It currently supports the legacy VHF and UHF public safety systems.
November 6, 2017
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