Why is Holdover Important?

md_jahangir Platinum Medal

(1)
7 years 10 months ago View: 962 Reply: 8

1F
View The Author

Holdover is critical to ensuring service continuity as well as keeping the operators OPEX to a minimum (e.g. elimination of emergency truck rolls to the BTS site). In certain geographical areas where GPS signals are received only intermittently, holdover is crucial for the operation of base stations. Holdover technologies are also necessary to maintain sync during GPS outages caused by external events, such as in 2007 in San Diego when the US Air Forces wide-scale denial of GPS caused a major GPS outage. Criminals can also jam GPS signals locally, given the commercial availability of GPS jammers, and environmental factors such as sun spots also contribute to GPS disruptions. Out-of-sync base stations dramatically increase the operators OPEX. Further, if telecommunications regulations such as E911 requirements are violated, the operator may incur additional expenses of reporting outages and carrying out audits.