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Aftermarket Daily News Wednesday, October 31, 2018 1 8 Cell Phones for Soldiers Provides Lifeline for Military and Veterans Cell Phones for Soldiers is a 13-year- old national non-profit dedicated to serving troops and veterans with free communication services and emergency funding. The program provides a life- line for military members while they are overseas and for veterans who have returned home but may still be isolated from the family and community servic- es they need to help them through the transition. Cell Phones for Soldiers is the wire- less industry's leading charitable recycler of electronics. Since 2004, it has recycled more than 15 million cell phones to fund its programs. Its existing partners range from Fortune 500 companies to local grassroots organizations. Cell Phones for Soldiers welcomes all inquiries to join the mission. With more men and women retuning home from overseas in recent years, it is providing less airtime to those abroad. However, the needs for communication solutions for veterans in the United States have seen a real uptick. To combat this, Cell Phones for Soldiers is currently providing more than 500 thousand minutes per month to veterans through low cost prepaid phones. "It's really important to provide domestic airtime for veterans. Right now they're being priced out of the market. A lot of these guys are making $30,000 or less," says Cell Phones for Soldiers co- Founder Rob Bergquist. "Being able to provide domestic airtime is important. It's one way we can help men and women as they come home from serv- ing our country." Cell Phones for Soldiers raised more than $75,000 from the sponsors and partners at our 2nd Annual Golf Tournament, which hosted many veterans. Also, Cell Phones for Soldiers Founders Rob and Brittany Bergquist were hon- ored by Forbes in the 2017 Class of 30 Under 30. For more information, call Rob Bergquist at 678.580.1976, visit www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com or email info@cellphonesforsoldiers.com. Optical Zonu – The Standard for GPS Fiber Connectivity & Base Station-to-DAS Fiber Transport By Gary Grimes, Director Sales RF Solutions, Optical Zonu Corp. GPS Fiber Transport Optical Zonu is now the only GPS-Over- Fiber solution approved by all four U.S. mobile wireless service providers. Whether you need a GPS connection for one or two sectors, or 100 sectors in a C- RAN Hub or base station hotel, Optical Zonu's GPS Fiber Transport is the com- pact and scalable solution of choice. With nothing to adjust and no software setup, installation is a snap. Our patented opti- cal alarm reporting permits quick inte- gration into the existing base station and DAS Network Management Systems for complete system status reporting. Auto- switchover antenna and fiber redundancy maximizes system reliability. NEBS Level 3 certification permits installation in the Central Office and C-RAN Hubs. The optimum balance of optical and RF splitting results in a GPS RF distribution for your C-RAN Hub using lightweight, easy-to-manage cables – all at a cost per con- nection that matches much more cumber- some approaches. ZONUConnect™ Optical Zonu's ZONUConnect is a Universal Base Station-to-DAS Fiber Transport that optimizes the connecting fiber count and the total equipment foot- print. The Fiber Transport utilizes CWDM or DWDM technology as neces- sary to minimize the fiber count as neces- sary. The Point-of-Interface is selected for the particular base station configura- tion and the DAS Interface is selected for the required bands and DAS RF levels needed. Together, the system pre- combines the services so as to minimize the total equipment needed. This ensures the minimum rack space and the lowest cost. The uni- versal platform connects to any DAS from your central location, and this great- ly simplifies maintenance engineering. The transport uses less fiber than all other approached, including CPRI-to-RRH. And unlike the RRH approach, all your base station equipment stays together at your property where you have 24/7 access. For more information, visit www.optical zonu.com. Thinking Small on the Subject of DAS DAS has become one of the hottest buzz- words in the CRE property technology ecosystem. DAS, short for Distributed Antenna System, is a system of radios and antennas that distributes cellular sig- nals within a building. It's commonly used in any space or venue where demand for cellular capacity and connec- tivity is high and the macro cell tower is not able to deliver one or both. Building owners are increasingly turning to technology to enhance their property's connectivity score, not to mention creating more efficient, less expensive to operate buildings. DAS are seen as an easy path for the property owner to do both. "Today's DAS solutions can lever- age a building's existing Small Cable Infrastructure," says Timothy Moynihan of SOLiD. Fiber optic cable, twisted pair and low voltage power networks are used extensively in construction today. Moving forward, a DAS that can simply be added to a building's existing infra- structure strategy is a perfect way to ensure tenants are connected and happy and can provide a building with a robust IoT access network." SOLiD's Small Cable World concept is a trend that is showing no signs of deviation. Building risers and hori- zontal cable paths are increasingly updated and with extra fiber to ensure future communication requirements are not left without a high bandwidth, 5G compatible option. SOLiD, a leader in wireless infra- structure, offers active DAS solutions for any size venue and budget. Its Alliance, Multi-Carrier DAS, uses low-, medium- and high-powered remote radios that require less infra- structure, making it less costly than comparable systems. Earlier this year at Mobile World Congress Barcelona, SOLiD previewed its GENE- SIS platform, not surprisingly, a platform that minimizes the use of big coax cable and leverages existing fiber distri- bution technology to support an enter- prise-friendly, WiFi-like remote radio access node. To learn more about SOLiD's in-building solutions, visit www.solid.com. Building a Better Mobile Presence More than ever, buyers are turning to online tools to help with shopping, whether they're ordering items at home, on the go or even making decisions inside a store. Most of that growth has centered around smartphones, making it more important than ever to have a solid mobile presence for your business. With the right data, tools and infrastructure in place, it's more affordable than ever to make it happen. In the past year, the biggest growth area in e-commerce has been focused squarely on growth through mobile devices. There are an estimated 220 mil- lion smartphone users in the United States, and 62 percent of these people have made online purchases from their phones in the last six months. What does that translate to for overall sales? Last holiday season, mobile devices processed more sales than computers on certain peak shopping days for the first time. What happens when these users shop from their phones? Forty percent of users will go to a competitor if they have a bad mobile experience, yet a whopping 84 percent will still have problems complet- ing transactions. If your company can get its e-commerce system working right, this gives you a massive opportunity to both retain current customers and gain new ones. How do you improve your e-com- merce sales? You need a complete sys- tem that works well on mobile devices without ignoring users on personal com- puters. Start with mobile-friendly ads and marketing campaigns to bring cus- tomers to a mobile website or app, and once there, make sure your phone num- ber is written in plain text, prefer- ably using the "tel" HTML tag. This tag lets the smartphone recognize it as a telephone number, allowing the cus- tomer to dial it easily by just tapping the numbers. Where possible, your products should be easily accessible on your web- site and via an app, but if you have to choose between the two, set up a mobile- friendly website first. This site should be able to adjust to different screen sizes, using a desktop-friendly interface on large screens and a mobile-friendly inter- face on small screens. For the mobile site, have buttons and text boxes that are easy to operate using a touch interface, and break down shopping tasks into mul- tiple pages so that the screen is never too crowded, and the user doesn't have to scroll excessively. How can you get started building your aftermarket e-commerce pres- ence? Vertical D e v e l o p m e n t ' s ShowMeTheParts database is designed to work equally well on computers, tablets and smartphones with interfaces designed for both touchscreen and mouse-based inputs. By using its tools, you can build an affordable, mobile- ready website using a refined interface, giving your customers everything they need to know about your parts. That includes compatibility information, technical documents, photos and even 360-degree views. It can adapt the sys- tem to work on your standard and mobile sites, and it can even package it as an app for Android and iOS. For more information, call 847.609.9540, email sales@verticaldev.com, visit www.verticaldev.com or stop by AAPEX booth #3663.