ERI Expanding Antenna Facilities, Workforce

Four weeks into a major facilities and workforce expansion, TV antenna and RF component maker Electronics Research Inc. is on track to meet its aggressive goal of increasing antenna production capacity by 800% before the end of the year, says Bill Harland, ERI’s VP of marketing.

The company announced April 18, the opening day of the exhibit floor at the 2016 NAB Show, that it had entered into an agreement with wireless provider T-Mobile to facilitate the expansion. Details of the agreement remain confidential.

However, the scope of the expansion is public. ERI plans to erect three new buildings — two of which will be used for antenna tuning — doubling its antenna manufacturing floor space to about 150,000 square feet. It also will add more than 100 workers, which will take its total workforce devoted to television to just above 200, Harland says.

With only a handful of TV antenna manufacturers available to meet the anticipated tsunami of demand for new transmitting antennas resulting from the FCC’s TV spectrum auction and repack, the agreement does more than simply expand antenna production capacity in the TV industry. It also accelerates the availability of antennas.

“We made the strategic decision that we are going to be ready on Day One when everybody gets their channel assignments to start producing and shipping products,” Harland says.

That’s a 180-degree turnaround from just one month earlier before the T-Mobile agreement came to fruition. A March 2016 report from Dallas-based Digital Tech Consulting quotes ERI President Tom Silliman as saying: “I can’t afford to hire, train, and equip technicians and crews that will be sitting around waiting for the work to begin.”

For T-Mobile, which is expected to bid on cleared 600 MHz TV spectrum, the increased antenna production and rigging capacity may help TV broadcasters vacate existing channels and move to new channel assignments faster.

“It’s a no-brainer for T-Mobile to do what we can to help the broadcast industry accelerate the FCC’s repacking schedule,” says David Mayo, SVP, Technology, for T-Mobile.

The FCC has given broadcasters assigned new channels as part of the repack a maximum of 39 months to complete their moves. The clock will begin with the release of a new table of allotments.

Antenna manufacturing and rigging, both of which are core businesses for ERI, have been seen as the major bottlenecks in the TV spectrum repack process.

While major reports and industry voices have asserted that finite antenna manufacturing and tower crews will make completing all of the work necessary within 39 months an impossibility, ERI’s manufacturing expansion will relieve that congestion to a certain degree and possibly help to show regulators and lawmakers alike that the industry is making a serious effort to comply.

“What we are doing [building out ERI’s facilities and hiring more people] is because of what happened with the digital build-out,” Harland says. “We know Congress isn’t going to change any deadlines until it gets down to just a few months before the deadline occurs.”

In pursuit of its plans, ERI has already submitted permit applications to begin construction of new buildings for antenna manufacturing and testing on its 100-acre site in Chandler, Ind., and begun to bring on new hires.

“We have waves of people who are starting work every Monday now through the second week of June,” Harland says. “We will do our second wave of hiring later this summer.”

Without the T-Mobile agreement, the antenna manufacturer would have been far less aggressive in the timing of its ramp-up.

“Frankly, we wouldn’t have started building up until there had been actual order activity,” he says. “Now we have the opportunity to be ready — hopefully in December — when everybody who is going to get a new channel gets one.”

Getting a seven-month jump on the spike in demand for high-power TV transmitting antennas will give ERI an opportunity to bring its new employees up to speed on their jobs. Training will take between three and six months, depending upon the task a worker has been assigned, Harland says. “That’s why we are starting now.”

New employees are coming from a variety of places, including “a very strong set” of technical schools in the area that offer engineering and engineering technician programs, existing members of cell phone tower crews and even competitors, Harland says.

“And there have been a lot of people let go from the broadcast equipment business in the last five years,” who may be available, he adds.

ERI isn’t the only antenna and RF component manufacturer expanding its capabilities in anticipation of the TV spectrum repack.

In February, Radio Frequency Systems announced the enhancement of its broadcast antenna and RF component manufacturing capabilities at its U.S. headquarters in Meriden, Conn. The company says it has added “expansive indoor and outdoor space” to produce and test its products.

Dielectric, too, is pursuing plans to ramp up its antenna and RF component production capabilities to meet the demand created by the repack, says company VP-GM Keith Pelletier. Currently, it leases a building from a division of its former owner SPX.

Dielectric is finalizing steps to expand its floor space and has already begun scaling up its workforce. “Over the past year, we have increased our workforce by 15% and have a roadmap to get the number of workers we need to handle the increased workload,” Pelletier says.

Currently, Dielectric employs 49 people devoted to TV antenna and RF component manufacturing, and plans to double that number, he adds.

Jampro, as well, has increased its antenna design, engineering and manufacturing capability, but that process began about four years ago with the acquisition of Alan Dick in January 2012, says Jampro President Alex Perchevitch.

The acquisition positioned the company for the clearing of the 700 MHz band in the United Kingdom, which began nearly two years ago. That added capacity also will help Jampro meet the increased demand for antennas among U.S. broadcasters resulting from the repack, he says.

As for ERI, even with the new manufacturing capacity, given the 39-month repack timetable, Harland anticipates most antennas the company will produce won’t be permanent antennas built to replicate stations’ existing coverage patterns, he says.

“I think the reality is the majority of stations will have to put up some kind of temporary antenna,” he says.

“On a practical level, we think the majority of customers would be interested in having that temporary side-mounted antenna be on their new channel, so it would continue to have utility after the move as an auxiliary antenna.”

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