Situated in the town centre, Hounslow House is an architectural masterpiece with glazed bays separated by anodized aluminium geometric shapes. It houses the public-facing amenities, library, café and exhibition space on the lower floors and the council’s employees and meeting rooms on the higher levels.
The Hounslow London Borough Council provides local planning applications, housing, waste collection and environmental health services. As a local education authority, it also covers social services, libraries and waste disposal. The council shares responsibility with the Greater London Authority for strategic policies including housing, planning and the environment.
The Problem
Hounslow House looked modern, sleek, and oozed on trend architecture from the outside. However, as soon as you stepped inside the building you would experience hardly any signal.
The building materials used in the remarkably designed building did not allow for mobile signal to pass through, leading to little to no indoor mobile signal. The building contractor, Bouygues UK, only realised this during the final stages of the project and had to find a solution. A building like this deserved first-class, stable mobile connectivity and time was running out to find and deploy a cost-effective, legal solution.
The Solution
From the outset, it was clear that this was going to be a complex install which would require careful planning. Frequency and ZoneWave, one of our installation partners, led in-depth discussions, site map consultations and a thorough site inspection. Due to the divisional design of the new building, 46 separate areas were identified across the 6 floors.
Due to its scalability, the Cel-Fi Quatra hybrid digital and Distributed Antenna System (DAS) solution was proposed to solve mobile coverage across the building.
This consisted of 22 network units and 66 coverage units with an attached DAS which were arranged into systems, allowing all four network operators to be boosted simultaneously.
The Results
Despite the short lead time and complex installation the project was delivered on time and within budget.
The feedback has been resoundingly positive, and Hounslow House now benefits from reliable, stable mobile connection on all major networks throughout the building.
