The leaky coax runs 8,000 linear feet along the length of each of the Lincoln Tunnel's tubes.
The top cable is where the leaky coax technology lives, fastened every few feet along the 8,000-foot tube.
Port Authority CTO Robert Galvin holds up a Motorola MicroTac 650, one of the popular cell phones at the time the technology was installed. The same infrastructure that allowed this phone to make and receive calls in the tunnel works with today's technolo
The New Jersey Lincoln Tunnel vent building is where AT&T and the other companies' base stations are housed, which send (and repeat) the signal through the tunnel.
Since AT&T helped build out the technology in the first place, the company has its own room in which it houses all of the base station equipment.
AT&T's Director of Radio Technology Carl Busseno explains how the company gets the signal to and from the base station room.
Inside the base station room is one twenty-year-old logbook, where all of the activity from the past two decades has been recorded.
The logbook contains entries for things like Ericsson employees visiting, tables being delivered, and details about upgrades to the overall system.
Other cell companies have had to find space in the top floor of the ventilation building for their base stations.
The cell companies' base stations are located in Lincoln Tunnel vent buildings on both sides of the river, which are home to dozens of chalk-drawn diagrams and charts that the Port Authority workers use as reference.
Busseno points out the the section of the room where all the upgrades to the entire system have been made.