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#NEDASNYC
In my last post I spoke of Day 1, which was the shorter day, here is day 2. Like I said, great show and I made so many connections and met so many great people.
The videos of this can be found here, this way you can see the people that I have met!
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This was my opportunity to learn from the best. NYC is one of the 
toughest markets to do business and one that you should not tackle unless you talk to these people first. It will help you break into the other markets and learn what to do and what not to so.
I want to personally thank all the people that worked so hard at the show and thank them for having me speak. I want to thank Ilissa, Amy, Jennifer, and Nikki for working so hard to make this happen. They did an outstanding job to make this a fabulous event!
Day 2, April 6, 2016
The first session I saw was with moderated by Berge Ayvazian of Wireless 20/20 called “Digitizing Our Arenas”. His panel included Ihab Labib of JMA Wireless, Jay Maciejewski of PC Tel, Marc Patterson of Boingo Wireless, and Matthew Thompson of Cobham Wireless. They brought up some great points and challenges of working with the larger venues. They also pointed out that you don’t just build it but it constantly needs upgrades and modifications and additional equipment, just because its built doesn’t mean that it’s final. There is so much you have to worry about, growth, improvements, new spectrum, new formats. It really is an ongoing job.
Next was “Capacity Planning, Technology Developments” moderated by Jordan Fry of Snyder and Snyder, LLP. This panel had Chris Pleibel of Perfect-10 Wireless, David Evans of AT&T and IEEE, Dean Fresonke of ClearSky Technologies, Mark Parr of Bandwidth Logic, and Russ Hamm of Rainbow Broadband. This group covered the need for more bandwidth and how many companies constantly grow and the upgrading of the systems is never-ending. Again, none of this is an easy process as you need to anticipate the growth and do the best you can. You also need to make sure that the supply chain is in place and things keep moving so that the integration of systems keeps moving.
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Session 3: Fiber to the X, trends, challenges, and solutions to meet the wireless demand. This session was moderated by Stephen Banks of KMB Design Group, LLC. This roundtable had Art Malierdirk of INOC, Craig Doyle of CommScope, Ken Strandfeld of SOLiD, and Ray LaChance of ZenFi. They talked about the fiber solutions for customers and how fiber is needed as the backbone for wireless solutions. We need the backbone to be solid and reliable whether we are going to the core or connecting to another site. Reliability of the fiber is a key ingredient to making the wireless work a success.
Next there was a presentation, The Edge, Where the end-user resides, by Doug Wiest of EdgeConnex which I thought was done very well to because Doug pointed out the connection possibilities of indoor and outdoor small cells and DAS systems. Doug talked about the growth of the wireless network and what it is today in such a short period of time. From wireline to wireless to the edge. Pittsburg in 2019 will use as much as DC does today. The growth is phenomenal! Well done Doug!
Steve Yapsuga of Tessco led us into the “Integrator Solutions: How and integrator works on an End-User’s behalf. This group was done as a fireside chat and had Douglas Fishman of SQUAN, Edward Donelan of Telecom Infrastructure Corp, Raymond duTremblay of Building Technology Systems, and Tom Chamberlain of Westell had a roundtable on integration issues and ways to overcome them. I found it to be informative and based on real world experience.
Then Mike Sapien of OVUM gave a special report, “Search for a Seamless Enterprise Experience” which covered the coverage that the enterprise users expect and what they really get. It seems that they rely heavily on Wi-Fi because it’s readily available and easy to install. They want carrier coverage, but carriers won’t support them. He also brought up the public safety aspect where people rely on indoor coverage that is reliable and seamless for work and public safety.
Next, Ken Sandfeld of SOLiD talked about “The MiddlePrise: They’re not too big and not too small but aren’t just right.” He spoke of the edge and how all the services were moving there. NFV is taking over! The edge could be the tier 1 carrier or the rural end-user, especially in today’s IOT environment. He estimates this market will be over $20 Billion in the near future.
Scope of Work Tutorial.
Then Phil Lawson of EdgeConnex did a talk on “The Edge part 2” which covered the evolution of technology and how quickly things are progressing within the last 20 years. It’s like on steroids! Can we keep up with the demand for change? Costs are dropping and demands are rising in technology. Now Social Media is making the demands, it is no longer a convenience but a necessity.
After that came my session, Developments in Mobile Antenna Technology, hosted by Mike Sapian of OVUM with Art King of SpiderCloud, Gregg Toback of Anritsu, Bob Langston of Advanced RF Technology, and me! We talked more about the technology of not only antennas but the system from beginning to end. Greg brought up how the testing is essential and if you miss the important steps of 
testing then you could have so many time-consuming problems that will eat into your bottom line. I have seen it, grounding and testing are better to be done up front! Bob brought up the amazing RF issues that you could run into and he had real live examples of the problems that you could have with the antennas and aesthetics. This is a show stopper and if you need to replace the antenna then you need a new RF design and not only that but it will eat into the budget. Then Art spoke about small cell market for the carriers which is a game changer because this product can all be Ethernet attached and the MIMO antennas connect the people in the building with low power. He spoke of what he did for Verizon Wireless and the demands that they made. He also talked about the interfacing they could do with Cisco that made installation quick and easy. I talked about deployment of course and all the potential problems you could run into. We discussed design considerations and potential problems and ways to avoid issues. We also talked about real world problems and what can be done to prevent them next time.
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The final roundtable was the “Carrier Conundrum” where Joshua Broder of Tilson headed off the session of Dominick Vileco of V-Comm, LLC, Maureen Hopkins of Tilson, Steve Weiss of Verizon Wireless, and Robert Gaudioso of Snyder and Snyder spoke about the wireless right of way, ROW, and what to look for. For one, these are all very smart people with in-depth real world experience and legal expertise speaking of the ROW deployments for small cells and all the obstacles that deployments run into. The municipalities could delay things for a very long time, literally years, if you don’t do things the right way up front. If you think you can push an installation through, going around the municipality, guess again. This session covered the major issues that have prevented outdoor small cells from taking off. For one, you have no idea how much time these people have to put in to get things moving ahead. Most municipalities have no interest in letting them install nor do they care. They also spoke of utility pole installations, very interesting. They also spoke of how important the site survey was to see what is really there, this is something I always bring up and yet it’s something that the carriers often want to cut out to save cost. Do it right the first time!
The last presentation was the “Investor Insights” where we heard from Richard Lukaj from Bank Street who spoke of how the IOT would really propel the business because data distribution is becoming critical He spoke of the growth trends in the industry as we head into the 5G era where the industry will continue to grow.
Remember that they have many upcoming events, you can see them all at www.nedas.com, but to list a few, July 3rd they will be in Boston, September 21 they will be in Washington DC, and in October they will be in Toronto. Go to www.nedas.com to see them all. If you want to know more about small cells and DAS and learn from the best, I suggest attending these events!
If you want to see the videos, go to https://www.nedas.com/events/nedas-spring-in-building-wireless-summit-nyc for all of them.
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