Torre KOI, located in Monterrey, Mexico, is one of the tallest buildings in Latin America at a height of 280 meters. The tower contains both premium offices and luxury residential spaces, with important tenants such as Banorte and IOS Offices.
The 64-story building contains 27 floors with 430,000 sq ft of office space and 218 apartments and 18 penthouses. It is part of the VAO complex and provides one of the city’s best panoramic views, including of the Cerro de la Silla, the Sierra Madre, and the Cerro de las Mitras mountains. The building’s amenities include an infinity pool, a bar, a sauna, and a well-developed fitness center. The project was certified LEED BD+C Silver in May 2018.
Given the building’s iconic status in Monterrey, Torre KOI’s management knew from the beginning that they needed to provide excellent services to their tenants, including cell phone coverage for the entire complex. Consequently, they decided to install a DAS system in parallel with the venue’s construction. This proactive measure ensured coverage for the first tenants from Day One and also guaranteed that the luxury facilities and finishes would not require changes after installed.
Building a tower from scratch: the challenge of creating a huge infrastructure system
Torre KOI had a large part of its office space dedicated to Banorte Bank but promised to residents that they would provide cellular coverage in the whole tower, not only in the bank’s floors. Can you imagine paying millions of pesos for an apartment at Torre KOI and not being able to place a call to your family? The building thought that was unacceptable, and so did QMC: when the building was still under construction, Torre KOI partnered with us, and we designed and installed a multi-operator active DAS system that covered 100% of the building.
First thing’s first: designing the solution
This project’s main challenges were to coordinate the building’s construction phases with the DAS system implementation and to manage the complexity of the design to cover all private and common areas of a 64-story building.
We started constructing our system right after the walls were up and before the ceiling was closed, while some of the IT systems were being deployed. This made things easier because we did not have to repair the ceilings after our equipment was installed. Alignment with other parties’ teams was crucial to avoid interference between the different service providers.
Another important challenge for this project was the architect’s concern with the aesthetics – mainly because we were designing for two different areas and tenants (residence and corporate). Our team worked with them to accommodate the needs and install the antennas with the least impact on the overall architecture design.
A unique project: Torre Koi
QMC’s system in Torre KOI is an Active DAS: a set of elements that distribute the cellular signal through remote units connected by fiber optics. This allows the signal to be closer to the final user with the exact amount of power needed, through an architecture of more than 450 antennas in offices, residences, amenities, and parking areas. The execution of a project of this magnitude required the highest quality standards, from the materials to specialized workers, excellent project management, and a qualified engineering team. All these pieces together enabled us to deliver an outstanding final result.
Results: flawless connectivity for high-end tenants
Once the system’s installation was completed, we performed a walk-test with the carriers and optimized the system to ensure call continuity and throughput at optimal levels. QMC meets each carrier’s service level requirements in all areas of Torre KOI.
The relationship with the building did not end with the optimization: our Operation and Maintenance team has a Network Operations Center (NOC) to monitor the system 24/7. We guarantee the system’s quality and ensure that all the elements are in optimal conditions for the lifetime of the system, with a pre-defined preventive maintenance routine.
