KENTROX HELPS WIRELESS CARRIERS ELIMINATE

Kentrox, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of two new Optima Cell Site Solutions: Optima Site Manager and Optima WAN Manager. The company’s groundbreaking remote site monitoring, maintenance and management solutions deliver wireless service providers unrivaled visibility and control of their cell sites. Driven by the Optima platform announced last December, operations, engineering and field staff will have the most comprehensive 360 degree, real-time dashboard views of network and physical site elements and an increased ability to correct myriad problems without the need for a truck roll. Optima solutions, such as Site Manager and WAN Manager, directly impact service quality – the leading factor driving subscriber loyalty – by delivering wireless operators a cost effective way to achieve faster diagnosis of problems, shortened repair times and reduced operations costs.

“A survey of U.S. mobile phone subscribers by In-Stat found that 47 percent identified ‘dissatisfaction with service’ as the primary reason they switched network providers, while only 15 percent cited ‘lower price,’ the second most common reason for switching,” said Charles Gerlach, managing director of consulting for the industry research firm In-Stat. “It’s clear that as wireless service penetration approaches saturation levels, network quality will become an even more critical differentiator for operators. Kentrox’s Optima solutions are comprehensive remote cell site monitoring and management solutions capable of cost effectively improving service quality by reducing outages and mean time to repair, giving wireless providers that competitive edge.”

Optima Cell Site Solutions by Kentrox are flexible, highly-scalable, turnkey solutions that automate critical network site management tasks in real-time. Optima gives service provider staff, from technicians to executives, the power to remotely collect, monitor, repair and report on operating data from all critical cell site network and infrastructure elements including power supply and back-up, environment and temperature, security and alarms, and wide area network performance and throughput. Even aircraft warning lights atop cell towers are monitored through Optima. Optima’s unique 360 degree, real-time dashboard views of network elements and site conditions allow carriers to proactively diagnose and repair potential network problems before they have an impact on users and operating costs while substantially reducing the need for a technician to travel to the site.

Today when a trouble ticket is issued, technicians have little or no data to diagnose the problem and therefore a truck must be dispatched to the cell site to determine the nature of an outage. Once a diagnosis occurs, another expensive, time-consuming truck roll is typically dispatched for repairs. In many cases, it takes additional trips before the problem is accurately diagnosed and fully corrected. With remote monitoring and automated control of cell sites, wireless service providers can cut mean time to repair (MTTR) in half.

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The two new Optima Cell Site solutions released today feature the following:

Optima WAN Manager
• Monitors the network for errors including issues with backhaul and throughput
• Proactive diagnostics to prevent failures
• Remote troubleshooting tools that cut repair time in half
• Generation of a full strength signal to radio equipment that results in improved wireless network uptime, availability and performance

Optima Site Manager
• Automates maintenance and management of cell site infrastructure and physical elements
• Monitors power supplies and batteries, and can start backup generators
• Monitors and controls environmental and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems
• Monitors and controls facility security including live video monitoring of site
• Monitors and provides remote management of microwave radios, Multi-Carrier Power Amplifiers (MCPA) and multi-vendor Remote Electrical Tilt (RET) antennas
• Checks the status of other cell site equipment, including antenna lights

“Kentrox understands that network maintenance consumes the largest portion of a wireless provider’s operating budget,” said Ben Stump, chief technology officer at Kentrox. “But consider that one in five trouble tickets results in ‘no trouble found,’ and that diagnosing ‘no trouble’ requires an average of more than two truck rolls to a remote site. You can quickly see how wireless operators are needlessly spending tens of millions every year from their operating budgets. Just as important as reducing unnecessary operations expenses is cutting mean time to repair in half. Since dissatisfaction with service is by far the biggest reason people switch providers, when there’s a problem on the network every second counts, and that’s why wireless operators will want Optima.”

Optima Cell Site Solutions are fully customizable to suit every customer’s unique monitoring, maintenance and management needs. A modular approach to Optima’s design allows customers to easily scale their installation to add new elements for monitoring and new cell sites to manage. The modular design also allows customers to quickly and easily integrate new capabilities as they are delivered by Kentrox. For example, in the near future Kentrox plans to extend Optima’s capabilities further by adding automated service testing of radio frequency (RF) strength, data service connectivity and throughput testing.

About Kentrox, Inc.
Since 1967, Kentrox has been a trusted partner of network operators and enterprises worldwide. Kentrox offers high quality, network-enhancing infrastructure solutions that reduce service provider’s operating costs and subscriber churn while increasing revenue. Innovative cell site monitoring, maintenance and control solutions have recently been successfully deployed by Kentrox customers to complement the over one million Kentrox access, wireless backhaul and traffic aggregation products currently in use in carrier and enterprise networks. Kentrox has major operations in the metro areas of Portland, Ore., Columbus, Ohio and New York, N.Y. For more information visit www.kentrox.com.

Visit www.kentrox.com to download the whitepaper: The Third Wave: Why Network Availability and Quality Are Key to Wireless Service Provider Success

Media Contacts:
John Sidline
Mobility Public Relations
(503) 989-5474
kentrox@mobilitypr.com

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