| Nationwide
first
With licenses in hand for its six operating companies, TIM Brasil was
faced with the prospect of being the country’s first cellular operator
with a nationwide footprint—but meeting its timing objectives would
be the challenge. A protracted delay in obtaining official approval to
proceed with network deployment from Brazil’s regulatory agency,
Anatel, set the project start date back many months.
RFS Brasil’s Director, Marketing and Technical Services, Alexander
Amador, explained that this delay set an important theme for the project
itself, and those companies supporting it. “Anatel’s official
go-ahead for this project was just delivered in late August last year,”
said Amador. “As a result, TIM has demanded fast turn around on
the delivery of the antenna and feeder cable products to ensure it meet
its deployment deadline.” The pace of supply is indeed fast—throughout
the course of the project, RFS will be supplying a selection of Optimizer
antennas at a rate of many hundreds per month, plus large quantities of
CELLFLEX foam dieletric feeder cable. These will be deployed across many
thousands of existing and new sites across the country.
Antenna products selected for this project are largely dual-polarized
antennas, with a large proportion being the RFS Optimizer model APXV,
featuring variable electrical tilt. “The Brazilian market today
is strongly attracted to this type of antenna,” explained RFS Brasil´s
Base Station Antennas Product Manager, Gino Spada. “The major benefit
of the Optimizer APXV is that it can address the wide range of antenna
down-tilts needed in Brazil—our country has enormous variations
in terrain and population densities. Using the Optimizer APXV allows the
operator to standardize on a single model antenna for all situations.”
Service and support
Given the project’s national nature and tight timelines, the company
demanded a great deal more than world-class products. “RFS’s
reputation for service and support played a vital role in winning this
contract,” said Amador. “On this particular contract, we’ve
assembled a specific and dedicated team to support the TIM Brasil GSM
roll-out.” The team comprises professionals responsible for off-site
and on-site logistics; project control, forecasting and expediting; finance,
invoices and taxes; contract administration; plus an extended commercial
arm resident in Rio de Janeiro, where TIM Brasil is headquartered.
RFS project completion of this phase is scheduled for February 2004. At
its completion, a genuinely pan-regional South American GSM network will
be taking shape, as TIM Brasil links its GSM forces with sister GSM operations
in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia and Argentina.
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