• Building a new cell tower. This option typically costs the company over $1 million and takes a good year to deploy.

• Modifying or enhancing an existing cell site. Such modifications cost the carrier on average $150,000-$180,000 per cell site modification. The modification can take months to be accomplished.

• Purchasing and deploying a traditional wireless repeater. Typically, such repeater technology costs $40,000-$50,000, not including set-up, installation, and on-going maintenance and support costs. Installation for these repeaters can typically take 3 days of the carrier's engineering staff time.

The carrier must conduct an investment analysis of each of these options, which frequently fails to meet the carrier's ROI (Return on Investment) justification or the customer/prospect's solution timeline needs. While the wireless repeater offers the quickest deployment time, a carrier typically requires an enterprise to be leasing 100-110 lines in order to make the business justification for the repeater equipment and lifecycle investment. In addition, carriers are challenged to meet the customer's desire for an immediate fix due to the time required to engineer, procure and install a traditional repeater solution.

But a new solution is emerging on the market -- a next generation of repeaters called adaptive repeaters. Here, "adaptive" refers to the ability to automatically respond to changes in a carrier's network. Previously restricted to the field of robotics, adaptive systems are a "hot topic."

One such company, Spotwave Wireless Inc., headquartered in Ottawa, Canada is an early company to apply adaptive techniques in the wireless space with its solution called SpotCell in-building coverage solution. A SpotCell adaptive repeater assesses its environment, learns about changes, and makes intelligent decisions based on the available information to ensure consistent coverage and protect the integrity of the wireless network. As a result, SpotCell adaptive repeaters are able to automatically sets the system gain and transmit power based on the received signal strength and available isolation.

The saying "If there is one constant, it's change" best describes wireless networks which are constantly fluctuating and undergoing changes related to the environment, as well as those initiated by the wireless service providers operating in the area. Add to this the broad range of buildings where subscribers access their wireless devices, and it is readily apparent that a traditional repeater -- a static, non-adaptive, solution -- cannot cost effectively provide a consistent coverage area. Furthermore it won't guarantee network integrity.

An adaptive repeater is the ticket to meet the needs of both end users and wireless service providers. It can be installed quickly and adapt to ongoing changes in the network and buildings without user intervention or adjustments. Let's compare an end user's experience with a non-adaptive repeater against their experience using an adaptive repeater.