About Sykes & Son
Located in the heart of London, Sykes & Son Limited didn't expect to experience a signal issue in their newly constructed head office. However, they quickly discovered there was hardly any/extremely low cellular signal within the building and wanted to find a solution to boost the signal throughout their premises, so contacted Frequency Telecom, a ditributor of CEL-FI solutions within the UK & Ireland.
Business Needs
Sykes & Son Limited deliver a range of building, engineering and maintenance solutions to iconic clients and sites throughout London and the South East.
They contacted Frequency Telecom during the construction of their new head office building to enquire about a signal solution. The brief was to boost the 3G & 4G signal for their company phones. Sykes & Sons office consisted of a 3 storey building with a basement level, and the signal was poor throughout.
The Problem
Frequency Telecom’s engineers carried out a site survey which included signal tests throughout the building and the immediate area outside. The exterior signal was strong, which is often the case in central London, and confirmed that the building material was blocking the signal.
Due to the metal cladding used in the construction of this building, the internal signal was non-existent throughout the majority of the office. This is a common problem in modern, sustainable building design, where the energy efficient materials block radio waves from entering.
The Solution
Following on from Frequency Telecom’s site survey, a CEL-FI QUATRA 1000 solution was proposed. This included 1 network unit, 3 coverage units and an external antenna to pick up the donor signal from outside the building.
The Results
On completion of the installation, Frequency Telecom conduct a thorough check and always walk around the property to test the signal in various locations – comparing the boosted signal to the original signal readings.
The results at Sykes & Son were excellent; the signal for 3G & 4G was significantly improved throughout the property.
Signal Strengths
To enable accurate comparisons, Frequency Telecom use professional signal testing equipment to take decibel milliwatts (dBm) readings pre & post install. A really good dBm reading will be somewhere between -90 and -70, the closer to zero the better.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| 3G | -119 dBm | -81 dBm |
| 4G | -122 dBm | -85 dBm |
"The signal has improved from 20-30% coverage to 100% and our staff have noticed a big difference in signal reception and quality. Before the installation, the signal was weak and most people had to dial back a few times to finish a conversation. Now that this has been fixed, our staff productivity has greatly improved."
"We found the initial surveys prior to installation really successful as they helped us to identify the dead zones in the building. The installation process was easy and very quick even during lockdown which we thought would slow things down but it didn’t. The engineers were very professional as was everyone at Signal Solutions that I spoke to in person or over the phone."
