Case Study: Major Metro Area
San Diego, California

San Diego is a beautiful Southern California coastal city known for its miles of perfectly groomed beaches, major entertainment attractions, sensational climate and breathtaking landscape. It’s no wonder that the city is known worldwide as a premier tourist destination. But it’s not just fun and games for this city of 1.25 million residents. San Diego also is becoming known as a key location for businesses working within telecommunications, biotechnology, software, electronics, and other cutting-edge industries. In addition, downtown San Diego has undertaken an urban redevelopment program that has transformed the once largely abandoned area into a beautiful display of ocean-side skyscrapers, modern live/work loft developments, upscale hotels, and many shops, cafes, and restaurants.

Facts

  • The San Diego area covers more than 4,500 sq. miles
  • The seventh largest city in the country and the second largest in California
  • Known as Telecom Valley, San Diego has become the nation's hub for the wireless industry
  • The city features 30 unique neighborhood business districts

Challenges
The current wireless infrastructure has been pushed beyond its performance limits. The current wireless infrastructure had been pushed beyond its performance limits. Carriers desperately needed to expand their wireless coverage in the area, increase the quality of calls made over their networks, and offer more wireless services to their customers. Due to the extremely varied topology of the city and the surrounding area—coastlines, snow-capped mountains, forests, deserts, valleys—and the comfortable, small town atmosphere the community wanted to maintain, traditional wireless infrastructure just couldn’t provide adequate solutions for carriers.

  • Large and growing population with seasonal fluctuations
  • Increased demand for improved wireless service
  • Growing tech business sector that relied on high quality wireless coverage
  • Variety of topologies that created wireless coverage challenges
  • Community’s desire to maintain "small town" atmosphere

NextG Solution
NextG’s San Diego deployment is one of the largest multi-operator, outdoor commercial DAS system in the United States.

Municipalities are increasingly leveraging DAS systems for added value and enhanced performance. These performance improvements include increased voice quality, greater call traffic handling, better mobile coverage, faster file transfers, and enhanced video-quality services. NextG precisely distributed its small DAS sites in locations that perfectly addressed the RF challenges presented by San Diego’s diverse topology. DAS sites typically are placed on existing utility poles, street signs, and other discrete locations in the public right-of-way. NextG provided a multi-operator solution that met the community’s aesthetic requirements.

Benefits

  • Enhances wireless voice and data coverage, capacity, and quality
  • Supports current and future wireless voice and data services from carriers
  • Serves multiple operators on a single system
  • Minimizes future construction by using advanced fiber optic technology
  • Increases capability to add new services and operators
  • Utilizes low power, low profile, unobtrusive equipment that blends with the landscape

Specifications

  • Frequency: cellular and PCS
  • Number of DAS sites: more than 500
  • Miles of fiber: more than 400