Bechtel Telecom Expands Technical And Engineering Services

Conniff also announced that Bechtel Telecom is near completing a major training, demonstration and research laboratory (TDR) for customer/vendor testing and analysis at its Frederick, Maryland, headquarters.

In expanding its engineering and technical services division from eight to 56 people over the last year, Bechtel has hired industry veterans and technicians with expertise in every stage of a carrier's network cycle. Bechtel's technical engineering service offerings now include: business planning, vendor analysis, technology analysis, network design, network implementation and network operations.

The company is showcasing its capabilities in these six areas at SuperComm 2001 (Booth #4706) in Atlanta, Georgia. It will be demonstrating how developers of 2.5-3G wireless and data networking/centers can take advantage of Bechtel's expertise.
Bechtel's new, state-of-the-art TDR lab will provide customers and vendors with comprehensive standards-based interoperability testing. Scheduled to be fully operational by September, the Bechtel lab will provide services such as validation testing of network equipment performance claims, circuit emulation capabilities, mirror image troubleshooting and 'best of breed' network element evaluation.
Conniff said the lab is dedicated to testing customers’ disparate network elements, the features and functionality of various types of vendor equipment and to analyzing whether these fit the customer's intended applications in their network.

"This lab can help our telecom customers assure that their networks are performing at the highest level, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Conniff said.

The growing complexities of merging older facilities or meshing different technologies over a single network requires significant testing and real expertise. Bechtel can provide these services at less cost to a company than trying to create the capabilities in-house, according to Conniff.
"Our customers, and their vendors, are looking for objective, expert technical advice and a comprehensive package of services to help them analyze, build, test and deploy the latest technologies in new networks," Conniff said. "A company's survival in this period of industry shakeout can depend on avoiding costly design and equipment mistakes and getting to market ahead of the competition."

Bechtel Telecommunications, a unit of the privately held Bechtel Corp., has been providing construction and project management services to leading telecom carriers and service providers since 1969.