AT&T Starts Selling ‘Cell Tower in a Suitcase’
A cellphone company has announced it is selling suitcase-sized mobile towers, which will allow customers to generate their own wireless coverage from remote locations.
The new product, aimed at corporate and government bodies, will mean police and ambulance crews will be able immediately to set up their own phone coverage in disaster areas after the devastation of, for instance, a hurricane.
Currently, cellphone companies have to send their own trucks in to disaster zones to act as temporary cell towers for emergency response teams in the area.
While cell companies already sell ‘femtocells’, small antennas that can improve your mobile reception at home, this is the first time they have marketed a completely independent portable cell tower.
Chris Hill, from AT&T, said the device could be assembled in half an hour and would, as a result, make a real difference to the efficiency of emergency response teams after disasters.
‘In the pivotal first minutes of a natural or man-made disaster, AT&T Remote Mobility Zone provides a solution to help maintain critical mobile communications,’ he said. ‘Users can set up a cell site in less than 30 minutes.”
The parts that make up the AT&T ‘Fly Away’ Remote Mobility Zone, top, pack away into a relatively small metal case.
The satellite is carried separately in its own bag and the generator, in red, is provided by the user, not the company.
The Remote Mobility Zone, which costs between $15,000 to $45,000, plus some monthly fees, can handle 14 calls being made at once.
Data is at less-than-broadband speeds and coverage extends up to half a mile from the unit. The ‘portable cell tower’ can also be mounted in a car or truck.
The Remote Mobility Zone’s satellite dish makes it independent of broadband service. IT can be used with any AT&T phone.
The company also sells smartphones that can talk directly to satellites and, like other carriers, it sells ‘femtocells’, which contain even smaller cellular antennas that users can place indoors.
Connected to broadband service, they provide added coverage inside a home.
levi
This is nice but it would have been a lot nicer if the article had featured perhaps a device to listen to shiurim when you are in a remote location. Oy Vei!
yk
it would be nice if some camps and bungalow colonies had these
SB
I have 3 friends that have been getting drop call from AT&T. I would not trust them for service. Worst is that if people don’t call AT&T about it, they arent interested, its not worth it to them for one person. Their service has been awful
elisha
dangerous probably the amount of radiation this thing would probably give of a rudimentary radio-wave beamer
Cunning!
AT&T has been notorious for not being able to handle all the influx of calls at big gatherings, I’ve seen them having to truck in huge portable towers (only after many complaints) to cover their customers when Verizon and Sprint were doing just fine. Now they ‘brilliantly’ came up with this ‘ingenious device’, rather than doing what’s their responsibility and covering their customers, they’re offering it for sale to us…!…?
Please clarify!
To #4, this device isnt meant as a permanent installation, and therefore would be all that dammaging if at all, given also the fact that it can only handle 14 calls at a time, it’s pretty low powered.