As the smart phone and tablet markets continue to mature, the demand for connectivity for these products only grows. The public’s insatiable appetite for connectivity continues to fuel the ever-expanding cell phone booster market, and its seemingly endless reservoir of innovation.

Symbolizing the rapid advancement of cell phone booster innovations is the newly announced 4000R from WilsonPro. The 4000R targets installation professionals and their clientele. It was introduced following the announcement this past spring that WilsonPro is officially a member of Verizon’s Partner Program.

“Solutions to enterprise cellular connectivity issues have traditionally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and taken years to deploy,” notes Bruce Lancaster, CEO of Wilson Electronics. “Wilson’s new products, its build-out of an installer network and the announcement of our partnership with Verizon are game changers. They have enabled WilsonPro to offer quick, cost-effective enterprise deployments that work exceptionally well, even for large venues.”

Jeff Gudewicz, vice president of corporate development for Wilson Electronics, says the 4000R is engineered to deliver coverage to large buildings regardless of the many challenges these types of environments present.

Gudewicz says the company’s goal was to design a cell phone booster that could cover large areas, while providing dealers with a product that easily integrates into a variety of spaces. He points out that unlike traditional booster systems that utilize multiple antennas, splitters, cabling and other accessories that can be expensive and time consuming to install, the 4000R is both cost effective and dealer friendly.

“The 4000R eliminates a lot of these problems [installing complex booster systems] The 4000R fits in a standard rack, it has a port for an outdoor antenna, and four indoor antennas,” says Gudewicz. “When you are doing multiple boosters there’s a lot of time and assembly. Each one of those four ports has a full power booster. Each one of those ports also allows for a distribution antenna. If you want to customize it with taps, splitters and more, it becomes a powerful solution with really high performance.”

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Other features of the 4000R include an interface design that allows for the monitoring of four independent ports simultaneously, as well as a color display with touch-button controls, and real-time power meters on each port so installers can see uplink and downlink signal strength.

One of the most important features of the 4000R is its channelized filters. These filters are designed to target specific frequency bands and carriers to provide efficient signal boosting for just the bands that need to be augmented.

Gudewicz says this was a feature the company devised after consulting with dealers and solving client issues in which multiple carrier frequencies are involved. A good example would be if the Verizon tower were closer than the AT&T tower. In this scenario he says the closer, stronger signal dominates, but with its channelized filters, the signals are attenuated so users get maximum signal from both carriers without compromise.

Dealer Support Ensures Installation Success

It's one thing to develop and test a product in a controlled environment and quite another to install the product in a client's building. Putting a considerable amount of resources into training and education, Gudewicz says, problems such as the near and far tower scenario require the company to prepare its partners for whatever they encounter.

“Training is something we are always working on. We have a dedicated person that works to train installers,” says Gudewicz. “We focus on three areas: They don’t know much about cellular, so this is a primer on the carriers and it gets everyone on the same level. Next we train on how to survey a site. You have to define the problem, and we have signal meters. The first step is measuring. Dealers need to walk around and measure. From there we go into detail about our product family and how to solve problems with our product family.”

Gudewicz underlined that Wilson's tech support staff are always available and aim to ensure both the installer and building owner are happy with the outcome.

Analyzing the current state of the cell phone booster market Gudewicz stresses that Wilson is emphasizing products that can serve large environments such as commercial buildings without forcing customers to invest in traditional systems that are complex and expensive.

“One of the areas we put a heavy focus on is commercial products and the underserved commercial building market. The amount of buildings in the U.S. under 10,000-square feet is about 98 percent, but they can’t afford the ROI [return on investment] on typical systems,” asserts Gudewicz. “If they have coverage problems that’s where the 4000R comes in. There are opportunities in the middleprise spaces, and there are a lot of them out there. The 4000R fits into those medium-size spaces. Part of it is having dealers be our evangelists.”

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