 at the website. Mobile Switching Center (MSC) Growth Mobile Switching Center (MSC) Growth The MSC border areas are similar to pilot pollution for giant cells. There is no air- interface capacity loss when four or five MSC regions come together, but there will be a greater load on the signaling and handoff resources. We want to manage the MSC re- gions so that the giant cells have their borders in places with less activity. It is also in our interest to put those borders in places where subscribers move infrequently and ve- hicles move less rapidly because this reduces handoff activity. Regular air-interface cells are at the mercy of the radio frequency (RF) environment. We can aim or tilt an antenna so that it covers a desired area, but we do not have di- rect control over base station coverage. MSC giant cells, on the other hand, are directly in our control in the assignment of base stations to MSCs. We can shape the MSC re- gions the way we want, and we can move their borders to stay away from high-density or high-mobility areas. 43.4 New MSC Placement Some wireless service providers put their MSCs in different locations to save backhaul transport costs or to ensure diverse geographic locations for reliability. Other vendors colocate all the MSCs in one complex so that they can use the common location to get lower costs for transport, power, maintenance, and other resources. We can place the new MSC with one or more existing MSCs, or we can put it someplace new. Transport cost is a major input factor in MSC placement. Depending on the local tele- phony environment, it can make a tremendous difference in cost to have the MSC in one place or another. The MSC has its entire backhaul network to all its base stations and all the transport it requires to the public networks, the PSTN and PPDN. In addi- tion to all that transport, we can add any inter-MSC transport we need, the Signaling System 7 (SS7) signaling transport we require, and any private wireless networks con- nected directly to the MSC. If there is no tr