Bergvliet High School - Capetown, South Africa

Customer:

Bergvliet High school is a public co-ed high school with 1130 learners, and 70 staff members in the suburb of Bergvliet, Cape Town.

Industry:

Education

Installation Type:

In-Building Cellular Signal Booster

Building Size:

350m2

Product:

WilsonPro A500

Cellular Signal Solutions for Education

Bergvliet High School was built in 1956 as a High School to serve the population of Bergvliet and the newly developed suburb of Meadowridge. The school's first Grade 8 class of 78 was enrolled in 1957. Since that time additions to the school buildings have been carried out on four occasions.

Bergvliet High currently has a student body of approximately 1130 learners and a staff complement of around 70. These 1200 pupils and staff members all rely on the cellular signal at the school.

THE PROBLEM

Towards the end of 2018, Bergvliet High School mostly consolidated the administration department into one physical area for the first time. Much to their annoyance, it was discovered relatively quickly by the staff that the area that was chosen for the new admin block had downright terrible cellular reception – the area is boxed in with iron spot bricks as well as thick concrete and steel reinforcing.

This made receiving and making phone calls difficult at the best of times, not to mention the severe delay on sending or receiving SMS’s. When the school credit card terminal was moved into the block to join the finance department, it was affected by the same issue as the terminal is cellular based – poor signal meant that transactions either failed or required one of the finance ladies to stand outside with the customer, waving the terminal around trying to get signal.

THE SOLUTION

After much struggling with modem attachments and being shunted around from place to place by other service providers, Bergvliet High School eventually decided on a cellular signal booster solution to replicate and boost the signal in the block.

The amplifier installed was the A500 Wilson Pro Cell Phone signal booster, with an outside LDPA (Yagi) antenna, and an indoor Omni antenna which re-broadcasted signal inside the administration area. The installation was challenging due to the awkward nature of the building, but well worth the effort the installation team put in.

After the install was done, the cellular signal improved dramatically in the area of the block, with the credit card terminal now permanently on 4 bars of signal. Additional internal antennae have also increased the signal for general cell phone use by staff members, which has in turn increased the happiness of all staff members in the block.