Whether it's wired, wireless, live feed or land line, the G-20 summit will demand it. And local officials are taking steps to ensure they will have it.

Some three months before the economic pow-wow, the city-Allegheny County Sports & Exhibition Authority board acted yesterday to make sure the David L. Lawrence Convention Center is equipped to handle all the gizmos and gadgets world leaders, the media and others will bring to the event.

The board approved a three-year contract with Smart City of Las Vegas to provide telecommunications services at the convention center and a 90-day lease with AT&T to install a cell phone antenna.

Under its contract, Smart City will be responsible for all wired and wireless Internet service and land-line phone and data service at the facility.

The convention center has the capability to handle up to 2,000 phone lines, General Manager Mark Leahy said. The "early projections" indicate that the summit will need 400 to 500, with at least some of them being direct dial at the White House's request.

Mr. Leahy said the 400 to 500 lines would be the most the convention center has done for any one event. With the explosion of cell phones and Internet dialing, the use of land lines has dropped off sharply in convention centers, he said.

But he's not daunted by the challenge.

"Not at all, because I know we have the infrastructure to handle it," he said. "I have full faith in our techies."

In an example of how much technology has changed, the convention center was built with about 125 locations for pay phones. But only seven such phones ended up being put in.

However, officials insisted that lines be installed at all locations nonetheless, and now are considering the potential for turning at least some of them into stations to hook up laptop computers, Mr. Leahy said.

Smart City currently has the contract to provide telecommunications service at the center. Under the new pact, it will pay the SEA 34 to 39 percent of gross revenues. While the contract isn't related solely to the summit, Mr. Leahy said he wanted it in place now "so they can get going for the G-20."

AT&T, meanwhile, approached the convention center about installing the cell phone antenna specifically to ensure there would be adequate coverage for the summit. It will be the first cell phone antenna at the building.

Mr. Leahy said AT&T wanted to make sure its customers did not lose any calls during the Sept. 24-25 event. He said it is not unusual to get interference or to lose calls in a building as big and with as much steel as the convention center.

"I think we've all been in an elevator and lost a call. That's what they want to avoid," he said.

AT&T will pay the SEA $10,000 to lease space for the antenna, and may consider a longer-term arrangement depending on how well things work out.

The summit itself will be held in the center's exhibit halls A, B, and C, some 236,000 square feet in all, the size of six football fields. That's where the world leaders will meet, with their delegations surrounding them.

Part of the center also will serve as the "media nerve center," where much of the phone and Internet requirements will come into play. At least 2,500 journalists are expected to cover the event. Officials are anticipating requests for credentials from as many as 4,000 media members, Mr. Leahy said.

He is expecting the operation to run virtually without stop, "24 hours a day because of the time zones around the world."

One of the many challenges with the summit will be finding the space to park TV satellite trucks close enough to the building to provide feeds throughout the globe. The center is expecting at least 60 such vehicles.

Mr. Leahy said the trucks likely will end up on the south side of the center facing Downtown. He said they need a southern exposure to reach satellites circling the equator.

At this point, officials hope to use two small parking lots outside the center for the trucks, and are considering other options if that won't be enough. "We are investigating alternative sites," Mr. Leahy said.

The center also is scouting locations for the inevitable news conferences that will go along with the summit. Of course, a natural backdrop is the view from the convention center along the Allegheny River, with the bridges and the city's two stadiums. Toward that end, the SEA board awarded a three-year, $54,483 contract yesterday to keep the windows clean.