“With our executives relying on BlackBerries for email and our IT staff needing Nextel’s Direct Connect service for push-to-talk communications, it was essential that we find a way to get coverage everywhere in the building, ”says Maureen Cardone, purchasing manager at OSI Pharmaceuticals. | Accelerated In-Building Coverage Deployment for OSI Pharmaceuticals CASE STUDY CHALLENGE OSI Pharmaceuticals develops and commercializes new drugs that prolong or enhance the quality of life for patients with cancer diabetes and eye diseases. Founded in the early 1980s the company has offices in New York Massachusetts New Jersey Colorado and the United Kingdom. Until this year however its headquarters was in a rented multi-tenant facility in Melville New York. When the company purchased its own building in nearby Pinelawn New York in 2005 the 120 employees at headquarters were looking forward to being in their own building but there was a problem poor cellular reception. Over the years management and administrative personnel had come to rely on BlackBerries and mobile phones with corporate coverage plans from Cingular and Sprint Nextel but during a year-long remodeling process the construction crew and corporate visitors to the site noticed that they had no cellular coverage inside the building. Situated on a hillside the signal from nearby towers was blocked on two sides by hills and at the back by a concrete wall. With our executives relying on BlackBerries for email and our IT staff needing Nextel s Direct Connect service for push-to-talk communications it was essential that we find a way to get coverage everywhere in the building says Maureen Cardone purchasing manager at OSI Pharmaceuticals. Fortunately the problem arose soon enough that it was possible to deploy a system while the remodeling was underway. After soliciting recommendations from its wireless carriers OSI acted on Cingular s recommendation and purchased a multi-carrier InterReach Unison Accel solution. Designed for facilities ranging from 100 000 to 500 000 square feet the Accel system is a compact turnkey solution for wireless coverage. The Accel system was easy to install and OSI Pharmaceuticals leveraged the on-site personnel for the infrastructure runs. Since there were already electricians .
