Sand Hill Dead Zone

I continue to find it a little bit mystifying that the worst cell phone coverage in the Bay Area is on Sand Hill Road. Sand Hill Road is infested with gadget freaks. And we love wireless technology. We spend inordinate amounts of time discussing the latest cell phones, the non-emergence of 3G, the integration of cell and PIM technology, etc. Yet, there's nothing we can do to get better network coverage in and around our offices.

The bad cell coverage on Sand Hill Road poses a real problem for companies presenting wireless technologies. Demos don't work and when they do work, they don't work well. On several occasions I've watched companies struggle to show very cool applications that would work perfectly 10 miles away in any direction. We've seen it enough that we don't hold it against the company presenting but it's a real momentum killer.

I highly recommend testing out your demo in the conference room before any meeting -- you never know when you won't have cell coverage, or can't get past a firewall, or don't have an analog line out, or can't create a video link, or...

Comments

[Jim Cook]

David, your post got me thinking that someone needs to build a fixed wireless antenna repeater that could be used to fix a "local area problem" (such as an office building with bad local coverage). So I "googled it" and found at least one. It could be a rather cheap solution. Looks like one mid-size system can cover 25,000 sq ft and up to 50 simultaneous users.

http://www.cellantenna.com/repeater/building_repeater.htm

You guys should spring for one of these devices to eliminate any future frustrations. Disclosure - I know nothing about these products and am not affiliated with the linked website in any way.

[Ven Reddy]

Since most VCs like to have presentations done at their offices, it makes sense for them (or get their landlords) to fix the dead zones. Then some VCs would be able to answer their cellphones inside their own offices.

It seems the carriers are not interested in addressing the issue or perhaps there are some restrictions on cell towers up at Sand Hill.

Although what Steve Wozniak did seems a bit extreme:

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,57594,00.html

Back in '98 a day before we were to give our pitch we hung around the VC's building to make sure our wireless demo would work; but sure enough, once we got into the conference room the next day the wireless/cell-phone connection sucked. We quickly switched to a land-line to finish the demo, but the demo lost a bit of its "punch."

I cut the company some slack if a demo awry, but I then like to observe the team in fire-fighting mode trying to execute their backup plan (slides, mockups, emulation), or in some cases see what excuses they give for not having a backup plan.

-Ven

[G. Yoon]

This is a real problem with my carrier, which shall remain nameless to protect the innocent (me, from libel suits by them). The interesting thing is that my connection drops at _exactly_ the same point in the road every single time--right as I pass KPCB. Coincidence? I report, you decide.

[aa]

I'm an AT&T subscriber and tend to lose my signal around the same place (and not get it back until I'm on 280 and at least an exit or two away from Sand Hill). That's what has always struck me as odd: it'd be one thing if it was just a Sand Hill Road problem, but 280 is a pretty major highway and there's not even great coverage there.

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