Sprint/Nextel
Frequency Availability Program (FAP)
Customer Challenge:
Sprint/Nextel’s network engineers needed to significantly decrease the time required to analyze and retune a market in order to provide optimal coverage for customers while best leveraging expensive network assets, particularly during the implementation of significant network changes resulting from Sprint/Nextel’s FCC mandated 800 Mhz Rebanding effort. Sprint/Nextel’s field engineers also needed access to the most accurate, up-to-date FCC license and data available to effectively analyze spectrum coverage.
What we did:
Ventera developed FAP, a .NET application which integrates with MapXtreme GIS functionality to analyze and report on frequencies available (and unavailable) for Sprint's use. FAP automatically applies FCC rules, incorporates new frequencies as they are acquired or swapped, calculates engineering parameters and identifies available frequencies for Sprint use on a per site or sector basis. System outputs are used to retune spectrum sites to improve network performance in addition to supporting Sprint's spectrum sales, acquisition, and leases.
Propagation analysis was added as an enhancement to FAP in order to improve prediction of interference where terrain issues exist thus reducing the percentage of frequencies that will need to be tuned off during frequency swaps. The propagation models that were applied more accurately accounted for terrain blockage and clutter, urban buildings and skyscrapers, for open, rural, suburban, and urban areas to more accurately predict interference potential to incumbents for all areas of the country.
Results:
- FAP reduced the average time for a Market re-tune analysis from 40 hours to 1 hour.
- FAP enabled field engineers to process 53,196 sector/sites in 5 days. This exercise would have taken a month using the legacy process.
- Sprint credits FAP with millions of dollars return on investment, attributed to productivity and other business operations efficiencies that were realized.
- Sprint also credits FAP for enabling Sprint to receive hundreds of millions of dollars of additional credits towards the substantial fee associated with the 800 MHz Rebanding initiative.