Subject: [NEXTEL-1] InPlay-WFI Boys Hit The Malls-

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 02:12:10 -0400

The WFI people who have been called the "LCC" of the year 2000 have re-invented
themselves. WFI whose staff mainly consists of RF Engineers from foreign countries has
started doing "Turnkey" projects.

WFI has little experience with Turnkey projects, until recent they provided only
"Rent-A-Engineer" services that included network design,deployment, operations and maintenance to all the major wireless carriers around the
world. Approx. 75% of their business is derived from design services.

I suspect WFI will "Sub" the job out or hire techs for this project. Since Wi-Fi operates
on un-licensed (licensed for us Hammy's) 2.4Ghz band. There is little regulation and oversight on who operates and installs this equipment.

While most of the Engineers are dedicated and well educated many lacked experience in
network design, deployment, operations and maintenance techniques used in the USA. Most WFI Engineer's quickly adopted after taking
the "WFI RF Engineering Crash Course" at their HQ. Once completed they and were quickly deployed to the market so WFI could recover costs
associated with their Visa & training.

WFI has had some serious financial problems, which reflects the industry downturn.  At
$85-$175 per hour many carriers have reduced their dependency on WFI and other consultants and relied on over burdened in-house Engineers.
Recently domestic revenues have increased slowly while international has remained flat or
declined slightly.

LCC has fallen from grace over the years with Nextel and has focused on emerging markets.
LCC was instrumental in helping Nextel make the decision to Form  "Nextel Partners" in the late 90's. They provided corp. design support
for the first phase of "Nextel Partners". LCC was also one of the first vendors to design and offer after market data collection and  predicted
coverage  design tools for iDEN.

LCC sold its iDEN data collection and predicted coverage design tools to a large
manufacture several years ago and has since concentrated on
other ventures.

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Westfield malls go wireless

The company that owns and operates some of Northern California's largest shopping centers
is going wireless, letting shoppers and store employees use wireless laptops and handheld computers and other devices as they
shop.

Westfield America Inc., the United States subsidiary of Westfield America Trust of
Australia, has contracted with San Diego's Wireless Facilities Inc. to install wireless local area networks for the company's 63 U.S.
shopping centers. In Greater Sacramento,Westfield operates Downtown Plaza and the Galleria at Roseville.

The first locations to have the wireless system deployed will be the Westfield
Shoppingtowns in San Jose along with those in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York.

No timetable has been made public for when the systems will be up and running.

Under terms of the agreement, Wireless Facilities will install the wireless fidelity
equipment, which is a high-speed wireless access technology that allows users to connect to the Internet without using wiring or cables.

"Wireless technology's anytime, anywhere capabilities will profoundly enhance the shopping
experience and transform the way our retail partners conduct business," says Todd Putman, executive vice president for
marketing at Westfield.

Westfield Shoppingtown centers lease space to more than 8,400 specialty stores and
encompass 64 million square feet in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Missouri,
Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Washington.

http://sacramento.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2003/05/12/daily30.html?t=printable

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