Don’t expect better coverage while banning cell towers
Updated 6:12PM – Consumerist reports that AT&T limited its online sale of new iPhones to New York but later resumed online sales to NY. The theory put forth by Consumerist is that this is a case of insufficient cell tower capacity to support additional bandwidth hungry iPhone users in New York. If the cell tower capacity theory is true (though fraudulent online activity may be the true cause), it’s understandable when the local government in New York (and many other cities) goes out of its way to make sure that its as difficult and costly as possible to install new cell towers.
As of September 2008, there were around 3300 delayed cell tower permits in the United States. Amhearst New York for example tries to extract tens of thousands of dollars in permit fees and consulting fees even for simple colocation applications where a tower already exists. As if the cost of cell tower wasn’t already expensive enough, wireless operators are forced in to years of costly litigation just to get a single cell tower approved. While it’s helpful that the FCC has adopted a new “shot clock” that requires local authorities to approve or deny an application, that doesn’t change the fact that authorities will still deny the application and force the carrier to go to court.
The rationale behind cell tower obstructionism anything but rational. Even someone living right next to a cell phone tower is going to be exposed to 1000 times less Radio Frequency (RF) energy than their own cell phone simply due to the rapid decrease in field strength due to the inverse square law shown in figure 1 below. That means a transmitter 100 times further away will be a minimum of 10,000 times weaker in strength. Typical field strength from a cell tower even when a person has “five bars” of coverage will be 1,000,000 times weaker than a person’s cell phone.
Figure 1 – Inverse Square Law and the rapid decline in field strength
Image credit: Wikipedia Commons
The biggest irony is that people who live closer to cell towers are actually exposed to much lower power RF than those who live far away from cell towers. That’s because the cell tower field is almost insignificant compared to the cell phone and the cell phone can and must cut its transmit power several fold when it is closer to a cell tower. Cell phones must use minimum transmit power to reach the cell tower because it increases battery life and to avoid overloading the cell tower. So even if a person believes cell phone radio waves are dangerous (even when the biggest studies show they are safe), they should actually be lobbying for more cell towers nearby and not less.
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Well that’s just dandy. If they don’t want the towers, I can tell you a place where they would be more than welcome. It’s called the North West Missouri. If you look on the coverage plan of AT&T you can see that the 3G coverage is non-existent, so while you are busy trying to get better coverage and spending dough to get through all of the legal tape, you could probably pay off some farmer to use just an acre of his land and get a few extra customers. I know several farmers and in fact, I know a lot of idle land where there is little coverage yet clients that currently don’t have a reasonable broad band solution. While AT&T may not get the immediate pay back that they would with the density of New York, they could easily pull off an installation and not have to spend the money to the legal eagles that suck our economy dry.
I am not asking for a 200 mbps pipe like Waterloo Iowa, some of these people would be happy just to get a 512k setup going. 3G might actually be their friend if offered at the right price.
Michael,
They do in fact pay farmers, and they really don’t need a whole acre of land to put up a tower. But this requires legislative changes at the state level because a farmer that allows commercial activity on their land faces a massive tax increase in their property taxes. They go from agricultural rates to commercial rates and that kills the farmer. Some states have figured out that they have to give farmers a commercial property waiver to allow them to lease land to wireless companies.
Some rural areas actually go out of their way to block wireless companies because they don’t want connectivity. Theres another case where a local official would only allow his friends or relatives to put up a tower but not a company.
So the problem isn’t just New York or the big city. The problems extend to rural as well.
Here’s the issue. It’s not about health concerns, founded or not. It’s about AESTHETICS and property values. If you have a choice in buying a home – and these days it’s clearly a buyer’s market – do you choose one where there’s a giant spike “visually” sticking up out of the roof of said home, or go someplace where no such hideousness exists? This is why my wife and I have been fighting to prevent a tower from being erected in our neighborhood, but to no avail, thanks to a law that grossly favors industry over all other concerns, even property rights—and I believe the latter will bring an already over-taxed NY State populous to an angry head in coming years. Especially as more densely populated places like Westchester and L.I. suffer both the scourge of unpleasantly located towers and ever-escalating property taxes. When a town asks for more money while LOWERING property values by not protecting them from this blight they are in for a bloodbath. And because this is happening nationwide the mobile phone biz in the long run had better come up with a coherent response; this ire will reach politicians nationwide and then there’ll need to be a solution that’s more equitable for all concerned.
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