AT&T Increases Capacity with COWs

Did you ever wonder how wireless carriers increase capacity in specific areas where large crowds gather? Well, one way is they can bring out cell (towers) on wheels or COWs and use them to augment the cell towers in the local area. This particular cow featured in a Rocketboom interview does 2G, 3G and WiFi and an increasing number of people have likely noticed AT&T WiFi signals at sporting events courtesy of these mobile wireless workhorses.

In the interview above you will hear the AT&T representative Mike Barger tout the fact the company has twice as many smartphone subscribers as the nearest competitor and he explains this is one of the reasons the COWS are needed in the first place. That and a 5,000% increase (you read that right) in mobile broadband traffic in the past three years.

The COW above was just used at the SXSW event where the exhibit hall was also supplemented with a distributed antenna system pictured below. The obvious question of course is how do we get AT&T to park one of these bad boys in my driveway when they aren’t being rolled out at events across the nation?

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