CCI Systems (Iron Mountain, Michigan) announced that members of its staff have now been trained and developed to form a group of distributed antenna systems (DAS)-educated certified engineers and technicians capable of DAS design, installation and optimization for cellular carriers looking to upgrade to a 4G network.

“The marketplace is full of companies that are designing systems without the proper training. CCI won’t do the work until we have taken the time and invested the money in training our engineers to make sure we do the job right," asserts CCI’s director of wireless solutions, Peter Murray. "These certifications are something we are very proud of and will continue to obtain. It amazes me that so many systems are being designed by uncertified individuals. There’s a lot of time and money at stake and it’s very costly to have to reengineer a system."

According to a press release, as part of the company's educational investment in DAS, two CCI engineers recently attained Level 2 iBwave Design certifications, with future plans to achieve the iBwave Level 3 certification. Additionally, CCI staff have attended DAS certification training by TE Connectivity.

“As with every service we perform, we believe proper training and certification is the first step to quality performance. We are very committed to wireless services and distributed antenna systems are a key component of that ecosystem,” comments Stu Lahti, vice president access networks at CCI. “We are very excited about our ability to design, install and commission TE DAS solutions and consider them leaders in both indoor and outdoor DAS equipment."

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In order to properly design or upgrade a 4G system, there must be "an absolute understanding" of the equipment and software being installed, contends the company. CCI says it is "leading the charge in becoming dually certified and is one of the few companies in the industry to have multiple engineers holding both equipment and software certifications."

"We now have the capability to perform in each of the major areas that are providing the backbone of the wireless broadband revolution. Whether it is 3G and 4G deployment on rooftop or tower, Wi-Fi, small cell or DAS, we can design, engineer, deploy and maintain the entire system," concludes Brad Baumann, senior director of wireless solutions at CCI Systems.

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