By Janet Kreiling
Photographs by Gary Benson/Getty Images

Not so many years ago, a phone in your pocket seemed the stuff of science fiction. Today, people can put the Internet in their pockets. High-speed cellular service is available in much of Europe and Asia, and in half a dozen major U.S. cities where AT&T Wireless last year launched its third-generation (3G) service for wireless voice and data.

Called UMTS, for universal mobile telecommunications system, the service lets users access corporate networks and the Internet at high speeds over mobile phones, personal digital assistants, and laptop computers.

UMTS—the first true 3G technology to be launched in the United States—is available in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Phoenix, Dallas, Detroit, and San Diego, and it’s going nationwide. Cingular Wireless, which recently acquired AT&T Wireless, announced in late November that it will build UMTS networks with an enhancement called High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) in another 24 urban markets by the end of 2006. HSDPA speeds will average 400-700 kilobits per second—rivaling and in some cases surpassing high-speed wireline access into the home.

Bechtel Telecommunications managed the buildout of the 3G networks for AT&T Wireless and has also begun preliminary UMTS site preparation for Cingular in three cities—Houston, Atlanta, and Chicago. Using a technology called wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA), these networks are worlds apart technically from their second-generation predecessors, just as their service is worlds more advanced. So building UMTS networks is not just a matter of bricks and mortar, holes and poles.

“A Stunning Job”

Creating a UMTS cell site—the radio transmitter/receiver and associated equipment, called the base station, and the antennas—is complex, even though the AT&T Wireless and Cingular networks are being built initially using many of the same antenna towers and base stations in their 2G networks (called “overlays”).

For AT&T Wireless, Bechtel did front-end engineering design on base station and antenna locations, determining precisely what’s at a site and how to fit the UMTS equipment into it. With space tight, it was no small job.

“We had to evaluate equipment—some of it barely out of R&D, handle site acquisition for new sites and additional permitting for overlay sites, and build and renovate sites as needed,” says Brent Brooks, Bechtel’s UMTS construction manager.

The schedule was “very, very, aggressive,” says Chris Jones of AT&T Wireless. “Bechtel built some 1,640 sites quickly and allowed us to launch UMTS service six months ahead of our corporate target.” Bechtel Telecommunications does “a stunning job of bringing resources to bear,” he adds.

One contribution he noted was testing and validating equipment at Bechtel’s two labs, the Training, Demonstration, and Research lab in Frederick, Maryland, for testing discrete systems, and a test bed at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, for evaluating their performance in networks. “Bechtel helped with antenna evaluations, for example,” Jones says. “They have the experience to say, ‘Yes, that’s OK, but have you considered doing it this way?’ They offer you several different solutions and let you pick what’s right for you.”

Best for the Customer

That, Brooks adds, is a Bechtel strength. “We’re vendor-neutral and technology-agnostic. We can recommend what we believe is best for the customer. And we offer a single point of contact so the customer doesn’t have to deal with many different vendors.”

The blending of the Cingular and AT&T Wireless networks will benefit particularly from Bechtel’s experience. “We’ve done work for both companies for years and have probably worked on all of their tens of thousands of cell sites,” says Pat McCormack, Bechtel’s project director for the Cingular buildout. “We’re in a unique position to help integrate their networks, because we’ve got a lot of data and blueprints for both.”

Cingular’s Atlanta, Chicago, and Houston installations will also be overlay networks to start. The company is doing its own network design and radio frequency (RF) engineering, with Bechtel supporting the work. “RF design is an art form,” McCormack says. “Our field people work closely with engineers at Cingular.”

UMTS Down Under

The entire world is moving toward high-speed wireless. In Australia, Bechtel is providing project management to Vodafone for a vendor-built network whose 1,096-cell site first phase includes Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, and Geelong. Bechtel is overseeing quality of engineering and cell site construction, providing governance of RF designs and design changes, and helping Vodafone with cost and scheduling.

“We are setting procedures for design and construction and developing testing procedures for network performance, as well as performing overall supervision,” says Payam Taaghol, a director of network planning and wireless technology at Bechtel.

For example, he says, “Vodafone specifies high-quality service. What’s high quality? We translate that into performance metrics.” In addition, Bechtel is helping evaluate a plan for Vodafone to share some of its cell sites with another service provider—something new in UMTS design.

“Our objective is to provide increasingly integrated, comprehensive services to our customers,” says Bechtel Chief Technology Officer Jake MacLeod. “UMTS is an evolving technology, and we plan to stay on its leading edge.”

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