The cellular network that our cellphones connect to in order to allow us to have conversations, surf the internet and download media is reliant on towers to make these activities possible. This means that the coverage areas that your network provider is discussing in their marketing materials is based upon overlap between towers, and the ability of your phone to find a signal from a tower nearby. Your signal is weak if the closest tower is far away or obstructed, and it is cut off if there is no tower within range. Complete coverage means placing enough towers in the general vicinity of users to not have gaps, no matter where they go. Each tower is responsible for a portion of that area, and if that tower was to be rendered offline, then the other towers in the vicinity would have to take up the slack. Network providers rely upon equipment placed within these towers to make the functionality of coverage happen, with the RRH (remote radio head) being placed at the tower top and the BSU (base station unit) equipment being placed either at the bottom or outside of the tower itself. The units are connected through the power cables and data transfer lines that run between them. These same lines are responsible for one of the greatest weaknesses that exists within the cellular tower. That weakness is that events resulting in damage to the equipment at the top of a tower will generally also damage equipment at the bottom.
When a cellular tower is struck by lightning, the equipment at the top is generally damaged. While this level of damage, being isolated, would result in a certain amount of loss to the company controlling that tower each year, in fact the damage levels are far greater than that which are isolated to the strike point. Instead, a massive surge of power couples into the cables and connection lines that feed the equipment further down and away from the strike point, overwhelming it and damaging the circuitry as well. For this reason, a single strike can produce damage far away from the top of the tower. In order to minimize this damage and control costs associated with doing business, cellular providers are continually integrating industrial surge protection devices into their towers, in order to better protect both the radios at the top and the BSU equipment at the bottom. Through the reduction in the amount of damage caused by subsequent power surges, the costs of damage can be minimized to the strike point itself. In addition to this minimization of hard costs, the towers themselves can be restored to functionality faster, providing better coverage to customers and resulting in a more satisfied customer base. The integration of surge protection equipment for cell towers “hardens” the network and improves service while minimizing costs and bringing down monthly charges, which directly effects consumers on a daily basis. The cellular network you have chosen is constantly assessing ways to protect its technology, and one of these ways is to purchase surge protection and connectivity systems from Raycap so that you, the consumers, can directly benefit from the technology that is deployed.
