NYSWA 2011: Tower siting a major concern for state association members

BOLTON LANDING, N.Y. – Cell tower siting was a major topic during the opening day at this week’s New York State Wireless Association Trade Show & Conference, as a number of speakers talked extensively about the challenges of deploying the infrastructure needed to support the country’s insatiable demand for mobile data services.
Those challenges revolved around continued opposition from some communities that has largely been based on radio emission concerns. While there does not appear to be any hard evidence that there is any danger from cell phone towers, there is still enough uncertainty to fuel opposition.
While there were occasional references to the opposition as “whackos,” the general feeling was that those opposed to cell sites were actually doing a much better job of getting their opinions across – even if that opinion was based on incorrect facts – than the mobile industry.
“The FCC and government has opened the door, but we have not done a good job telling what the big challengers are for deployment,” explained Laura Altschul, equity partner at WPi Services L.L.C. “Communities are organizing in a way like never before and are willing to go to court. … These people are not whackos, they are our neighbors.”
Speakers also pointed out that opposition to new tower sites are really a small minority of the population, and that a vast majority of the population is really in support of better wireless coverage.
“Reliable coverage is something a strong majority wants and feels they deserve,” explained T-Mobile USA’s Steven Caplan.
Caplan noted that consumer polling done by the carrier found that 53% of adults did not care if there was a cell site in their community, with just 9% opposing cell sites. Caplan said the goal should be to get that 53% to be more vocal than the 9%.
T-Mobile USA’s polling also found that 46% of adults said they have never seen a cell site.
This confrontation is only expected to grow as the mobile industry’s need to continue improving coverage to both maintain current service levels as well as to meet the call for near universal mobile broadband coverage could require a eight-times increase in the number of cell sites. Adam Walters from Phillips Lytle L.L.P., noted that while there were more than 250,000 cell sites spread across the country at the end of 2010, some estimates have predicted that need could swell to as many as 2 million sites by the end of 2020.
One option suggested by a few speakers was for the industry to talk up the connection between mobile communications and the public safety sector.
“We need to speak about public safety and keeping families connected,” said Jane Builder, T-Mobile USA Inc. Northeast/Mid-Atlantic engineering’s senior manager for external affairs. “We need to realize that public officials take their direction from keeping their constituents safe. Most support the need for new sites, and we need to counter the one-third that are vocal against this.”
Altschul added that the industry might do itself some good if it began saying it was “broadband,” a term that lacks the negative connotations of “wireless.”
Carl Calabrese, a partner at Masiella, Martucci, Calabrese & Associates, noted that with each “revolution,” whether in transportation, utilities or even the “green” revolution, people get used to the infrastructure that is needed to support it. He cited the streets and freeways crisscrossing the country, the untold numbers of electricity towers and poles and the growing population of windmills, all bits of infrastructure that have become just a part of the landscape.
There also seemed to be a mixed reaction to the Federal Communications Commission’s “shot clock” program with some noting it marked the current commission’s first real stab and hastening the deployment of new infrastructure, while others noted that municipalities have managed in many cases to circumvent the main thrust of that proposal and render it nearly useless.