Public Comments: Hearing Ex. 1 - ATT Additional Testimony (5/27/15)

Coverage Justification Addendum Three primary design objectives for cellular networks are to maximize coverage, minimize interference, and increase capacity. High elevation sites can provide sizable coverage, however, they also create interference when they significantly overlap underlying sites. A small level of interference is tolerable, but a high level of interference causes to poor voice quality, dropped calls, high error rate, reduced throughput, lower capacity, etc. One such site in Eugene is EU02 Blanton Heights. AT&T has a long term design plan to reduce the interference from EU02 that has included removing the north facing sector for the newer technologies - UMTS and LTE. This decreases interference in Eugene. Also reducing the overlap from the southeast facing (EU02 beta) sector by setting the azimuth and downtilt aggressively to minimize its coverage into east Eugene and Springfield. Azimuth and downtilt cannot sufficiently mitigate interference from EU02 beta. AT&T's long term plan also includes multiple lower new sites to fill in the coverage provided by EU02 beta. These sites are EG42, EG46 and EG49. After these new sites are implemented, EU02 beta can be turned down. This long term plan has been proceeding for more than 7 years. A network change was implemented in March, 2015 to more closely align the antenna electrical downtilts for EU02 beta. The electrical tilts were adjusted on the LTE 700 service so it is similar to UMTS 850 electrical tilt. The resulting coverage change can be seen when comparing Exhibit A and Exhibit B. An addendum to the coverage justification has been provided to additionally show a coverage gap exist across all bands in use in the area at this time. Provided are the coverage plots for LTE 700, UMTS 850 and LTE 1900. As seen in Exhibits B, E, and H all bands have a significant gap in coverage (as configured with EU02 beta on-air and the change (above) implemented on LTE 700).