One of Europe’s biggest retailers operate a robust network of warehouses and distribution centres across UK. Each site depends on mobile networks for internal and external corporate communications which was being affected by the building structures.
Business Needs
The internal team within the transport division needs to be able to liaise and coordinate with their drivers as well as their colleagues in the other warehouses for business-critical matters. For ensuring optimum productivity, mobile communication is a key enabler in the companys growth strategy.
The Problem
Their warehouses are constructed using steel, which is well known to block the mobile signal. Thus, mobile signal coverage has been an existing issue in four of their distribution centres located in Wolverhampton, Wigan, Barnsley & Harlow UK.
As a corporate user of Vodafone, they had been using a Vodafone’s inhouse solution to overcome the signal issue until Vodafone discontinued the solution. This meant no mobile signals, which made communication between the distribution centres limited to desk phones.
The Solution
The IT department reached out to Frequency Telecom in a quest to find a solution. Following a desktop survey and an on-site signal survey, the account manager engaged one of the trusted and CEL-FI certified installers to design and install the solution. CEL-FI QUATRA 1000 was used in this project due to it’s ability of boosting single network within a large area.
The Challenges
The brief to the Frequency account manager was to improve the Vodafone signal within the office and chiller areas. The pre-installation assessment highlighted the need for some fibre extenders due to three of the locations within the chiller area having switches with fibre connections, instead of copper.
The Results
The installation of CEL-FI QUATRA 1000 resulted in full coverage within the agreed areas of all four of the warehouse locations.
At the installation stage, we carefully designed the installations of the coverage units to provide sufficient coverage in the chiller areas, without the fibre extenders. This resulted in a 5% reduction in the estimated cost.