– John Spindler, Vice President of Wireless Product Management at ADC (www.adc.com), says:

In general, wide area wireless networks don’t suffer from all of the security concerns that local area nets are faced with. Today’s “cellular” networks are extremely secure. From that standpoint, deploying a licensed band, wide area wireless network within an enterprise presents far fewer challenges.

Performance issues will largely be centered on coverage and capacity. If all identified areas of an enterprise do not have wireless coverage, users will either not be able to make calls (voice or data), or will experience poor performance such as slow transmission or dropped calls because they are on the edge of a “cell” (coverage boundary). Also, if adequate capacity is not provisioned in terms of the amount of channels and bandwidth available, there will be resource contention, and users again may either experience the inability to place a call (think about the last time you saw five bars on your cellphone but couldn’t make a call – that’s because there was coverage but no capacity available), or will experience unacceptable throughput of a data transmission (either to or from their device). When selecting a product, managers should consider a solution that has an alarm and management platform.

When assessing an in-building wireless solution, it’s important to understand the total cost of the solution. The turn-key system will have a significant percent of initial cost in labor and infrastructure. There are solutions that use standard facility cabling. This can save time and cost if there is a pre-wired infrastructure in place. And because of familiarity, may be easier to install and more manageable, thus less costly for installation. Many wireless solutions do not use standard structured cabling. Also, wireless needs today and for the future should be considered. It is important to select solutions that will accommodate growth. The system may need to be expanded as the facility expands. Or, the system may need to support new services from wireless operators.