Tech Update
OPPORTUNITIES IN RF COMMUNICATIONS

RF communication service providers are expanding, enhancing, and hiring

"The telecom industry is an amazing field with infinite possibilities." - Francisco Angel, U.S. Cellular

Technical opportunities continue to open up in a variety of sectors

By Sue Poremba
Contributing Editor

Senior director/systems engineer Remberto Martin manages satellites for WildBlue.

Sprint Nextel's Blanaid Kinch came from Northern Ireland to pursue her RF career.

Most folks have a cell phone these days. Most businesses depend on wireless devices to stay connected. With constantly expanding usage, RF communication continues to grow and improve. And to increase its need for RF engineers.

At Sprint Nextel, for example, "We want to attract and hire the best and brightest talent from across the country," says Tammy Edwards, director of inclusion and diversity. "Appreciating diversity and encouraging an inclusive workplace are critical to the way we do business. We know the diversity of our employees brings a wealth of ideas to the table, which ultimately allows us to better serve our equally diverse customer base."

Blanaid Kinch is an RF engineering manager at Sprint Nextel
In 1995, when Blanaid Kinch began working for Nextel (now Sprint Nextel, Reston, VA), RF was a fledgling industry. "If you had a cell phone back then it was extremely unusual and a real status symbol," she says. "Nextel's phone was a two-way unit with phone service, and that's how it was marketed."

Kinch began at Nextel as a sales engineer. After a year she transferred to a job as an associate RF engineer. Now she's an RF engineering manager at Sprint Nextel, and currently transitioning into a new role of capacity planning on the WiMAX network. "It involves traffic trending and analysis," she says. "I'll be dimensioning our 4G WiMAX network." 4G WiMAX, she explains, is a wireless broadband network that delivers high-speed data rates via a wireless card.

She's also involved with the company's recruiting efforts, and particularly interested in bringing more woman techies into this traditionally male-dominated field.

Kinch has a 1992 BEng in electronics and a 1993 MS in electronics from Queens University (Belfast, Northern Ireland). In college she discovered she had "a knack for RF. It was a practical application of math, which I liked."

In 1994 she applied for her Green Card to come to the U.S. "I figured it was a great place to have a career in RF engineering," she says.

She boarded a plane with a one-way ticket, little money and no job contacts. She lived with relatives in Boston, MA and, just as she thought she would, she soon found a job. It was with the rapidly growing Nextel network.

"Wireless is more and more embedded in people's lives," she says. "The technology has to keep up with the customers' demands. People are using their phones as wireline replacements."

Remberto Martin is a senior director/ systems engineer with WildBlue

Remberto Martin.

When Remberto Martin arrived in the U.S. in 1974 he was a teenager who couldn't speak a word of English. But intensive ESL classes were available in the Los Angeles, CA area where Martin lived, and he took full advantage of them.

"I was fortunate enough to get good grades, a couple of scholarships, and an advisor who suggested engineering," he says.

Today he's a senior director/systems engineer with WildBlue (Greenwood Village, CO). "It's a small company but we're providing an important service," he says. The goal of WildBlue is to bring high-speed Internet service to rural America via satellite communication.

"At one time the Internet was a luxury but now it's a necessity," Martin reflects. "Broadband Internet is almost as essential as telephone service. When I joined the company it was pioneering Ka-band technology with a new generation of satellites and it was exciting."

In his job, Martin is responsible for anything to do with communication between the satellite and the customer, including design, operation and procurement. His current project involves WildBlue's most recent satellite, launched last December.

"It's a complex process from the time you get it from the manufacturer until you actually bring it into use," he says. "The day after we brought it up we had a thousand new customers. We have to make sure we work out the glitches because it affects a lot of customers."

In many rural areas, he explains, "People may not have access to cable or DSL, but a satellite doesn't care where you live."

Martin earned his 1982 BSEE at Northrop University (Los Angeles, CA). With a GEM scholarship he went on to Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA) for his 1983 MSEE. He took courses in satellite communications, and when he graduated he went to work for TRW (now Northrop Grumman).

"I was there for twelve years and honed my skills working on a very complex military satellite," he explains. In 1996 he went from military work to commercial with Hughes Communication. In 2000 he got the call from WildBlue.

Nicole Speed is an HFC design supervisor with Cox Communications

Nicole Speed.

In 2001 Nicole Speed graduated from Southern Polytechnic State University (Marietta, GA) with a BS in MIS. She already had a head start in her career with Cox Communications (Atlanta, GA), a broadband provider offering digital cable, high-speed Internet and phone service.

"My first major in college was CE so I had a strong background in drafting," she says. "I applied for a part-time temporary position with Cox and it led to a full-time job."

She was recently promoted to HFC design supervisor. "Basically I'm in charge of the Cox east region cable system and all the network design. We establish the design criteria here, running different scenarios and taking into account the different vendors' equipment. We do all the contracts for Cox's systems," she explains.

A current project involves an upgrade in Macon, GA, improving the equipment from 750 MHz to 1 GHz. "Right now we're doing a walkout and I'm tracking the process of the walkout contractor," she explains. She's also working on a walkout for a fiber plan in Roanoke, VA.

A walkout, Speed explains, is "the physical verification in the field of every piece of RF equipment in the plan. It makes a record of what's out there. You have to make sure the maps are correct and that they follow all the Cox standards, so they aren't compromising the plan or our customers."

In college, Speed first worked for Lucent Technologies and then for KMC Telecomm, a contractor. "My Lucent job was fulltime," she remembers. "I worked from 3 pm to midnight. I didn't have a car, so I'd catch a bus to my job, go home after midnight to finish homework, and get up the next morning to go to school."

When she first entered the field she had no idea what cable TV entailed, she recalls with a smile. "I saw rows and rows of equipment and it sparked my interest. I wanted to know what that equipment was and how it worked."

Kristin Rinne is SVP of architecture and planning for AT&T

Kristin Rinne.

"AT&T (San Antonio, TX) integrates diversity and leverages inclusion in its business strategies and tactical imperatives," says Cindy Mayer, executive director of staffing. "Our diverse workforce is our greatest asset, and it's a result of our commitment to recruit and hire the very best talent. Today AT&T's U.S. workforce is 46 percent female and 38 percent people of color."

Kristin Rinne is SVP of architecture and planning for AT&T. "My job is to figure out how to make more of the information and content you want accessible wherever you want to be, on whatever device you want to use," she says.

Rinne got her BA in math from Washburn University (Topeka, KS) in 1976. She had planned to teach math, but "I had the opportunity to interview with Southwestern Bell Telephone, and they offered me a job in special services engineering," she says. "I thought, "Okay, I'll try that for a year,' and that was more than thirty years ago!"

At that time Southwestern Bell was part of AT&T, and the company was recruiting women and minority techies for nontraditional jobs. Rinne found that she loved telecom. "You impact people's lives," she says.

Over the years she's handled a variety of wireline and wireless engineering roles, technology positions and jobs in ops and customer care.

Before the AT&T-BellSouth merger she was CTO of Cingular Wireless, and responsibilities from that position moved with her to her current job. "I was and am still responsible for the technology direction of our mobility services," she explains. That includes infrastructure and device planning and the technology side of new services.

"In addition, with the new position I've taken on the architecture and planning for the whole AT&T corporation, for both network and IT."

In her years with AT&T Rinne has seen a lot of changes. "I went through the divestiture in 1984, and since then I've been through eight mergers and acquisitions, including the creation of Cingular, and then the merger of Cingular and BellSouth back into AT&T.

"The name is the same, but this is a very different industry from thirty years ago."

Gira Patel is an RF engineer at T-Mobile USA

Gira Patel.

Gira Patel works at T-Mobile USA (Parsippany, NJ) as an RF engineer. It's her job to diagnose and help fix network-related problems. "If something isn't quite right," she says, "I go out to the field personally and do an analysis of the data."

She likes her job's combination of field and office work. In the course of her fieldwork, "I've gotten to know New Jersey well," she says.

Patel was born and grew up in India. While she was working on her 2001 BEng in instrumentation and control at Dharmsinh Desai Institute of Technology (Gujarat, India), her parents moved from India to New Jersey. She joined them after graduation, and went on to a 2005 MSEE from Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, NJ).

Following a suggestion from her advisor, Patel took a wireless course at Stevens. "It seemed very interesting, so I signed up for two more courses in wireless," she says. "After that, I decided I wanted to make wireless communication my profession."

She sees a lot of women in engineering positions at T-Mobile. "Talent is most important here," she says. "On my team there is a lot of diversity." Like everyone else, she participates in the company's employee referral program. "Everyone is responsible for finding good people," she says. "Everyone shares in the diversity efforts."

Francisco Angel manages a network of cell sites at U.S. Cellular

Francisco Angel.

"I've always been fascinated by the potential within the telecom industry," Francisco Angel says. "It'sÊan amazing field with infinite possibilities."

In 1992 Angel graduated from Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas (Bogotá, Colombia) with a BSEE with an emphasis on electronics and telecom. Then he joined a startup cellular company in Colombia.

"There were no cell companies in Colombia at the time," he explains. "This company was to participate in a cellular spectrum auction. It was a very exciting opportunity for me."

In fact, it jumpstarted his career in RF. He worked for several companies, and four years ago came to the U.S. for a job as a senior RF engineer with U.S. Cellular (St. Louis, MO.)

Today he's the company's regional performance manager in Missouri and parts of Illinois. He oversees a staff of eight engineers that "guard and improve" a network of more than 200 cell sites.

"I was fortunate to start my career at a time when Colombia's wireless industry was developing. I had the opportunity to help design and deploy the first cellular network there. I've remained in the industry, and now I'm happy to work at U.S. Cellular, a company that values and respects every associate and customer."

The main objective of his team is to optimize the network to minimize dropped calls and maintain and enhance voice quality, he explains. "Optimization is a continuous process based on real drive-test data and statistics. The data is analyzed and software or hardware changes are made to solve any potential problems.

"If a customer calls to report a problem or express a concern, our team works with the customer to collect information and make the necessary adjustments to resolve the problem."

What does he think the future holds? "At U.S. Cellular, we will continue to provide the very best in customer satisfaction and service," Angel says. "We will continue to enhance our network and provide a comprehensive range of wireless products and services and superior customer support in all the areas we serve."

D/C

Sue Marquette Poremba is an engineering and construction writer. She's based in State College, PA.

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