Crown Castle launches Paradise Valley DAS network using faux cacti

PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. – There’s something in the cacti out in Arizona, but you have to look close to see it.
Paradise Valley city officials, AT&T Inc., and NewPath Networks Inc., a subsidiary of Crown Castle International Corp., got together earlier this month at a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate better cell service in the small, affluent town outside of Phoenix.
“Paradise Valley is very high-end. Dan Quayle, Shaquille O’Neil (live there),” said Mike Kavanagh, president of DAS Networks at Crown Castle. “It’s an area that’s essentially dark – people have been trying to put cell sites in there for the last 20 years. Most of the coverage they had was coming from the outside firing in.”
The celebration was warranted, as it took many hurdles to get the outdoor distributed antenna system off the ground in a community that was weary of eyesores and continually rebuffed advances throughout the years to make builds that would improve signal strength and lower the amount of dropped calls in the town.
AT&T approached Newpath Networks to grow its network in the greater Scottsdale area in 2008, and in 2009, began discussions with Paradise Valley. Starting off by working with the citizens and city council of Scottsdale, Newpath Networks listened to community concerns as Paradise Valley officials kept an eye out for how things progressed.
After Scottsdale appeared a success, and there were 16 public meetings on the proposed system in Paradise Valley, the town council approved a special use permit for the DAS in 2010. Around this time Newpath Networks was acquired by Crown Castle. The green light of the build continued, with the antenna system designed to provide coverage to wireless providers through a single fiber-optic backbone.
As a neutral host, Crown Castle currently has space for five more carriers on the Paradise Valley DAS with AT&T serving as the anchor to provide service to the 16 square-mile community.
Kavanagh said that health concerns are always highest on the list to address in town meetings, followed by the issue of aesthetics. He noted that selling people on the idea of a build included the benefits of strengthening a public-safety network and educating residents about other advantages.
“You could argue very easily that (a stronger network) can increase property values,” Kavanagh said. “People work a lot from home nowadays and if you can’t use your cell phone or plug in your data stick, that’s reducing the value of that real estate.”
In terms of a build, Kavanagh said the aesthetics and landscape is very important because utilities in the Phoenix area are underground, leaving few vertical structures with which to place an antenna. Traffic signals and light poles are sought-after as places to put DAS first, but building structures is often necessary and allowed under the rules of being a public utility. Of course, specific city ordinances can get in the way as well, providing another hurdle to access.
The greater Scottsdale build required Crown Castle to put up about 150 faux cacti. The new system in Paradise Valley includes 50 cellular nodes with three on streetlights, two on traffic signals and 45 in faux cacti.
“We create a customized cactus with the electronics and antennae inside the structure, and we put that in the public right-of-way,” said Kavanagh.
Kavanaugh said that Crown Castle now has a total of around 350 nodes in the greater Phoenix area, including in the west valley at the University of Phoenix stadium where the National Football League Arizona Cardinals play, and at the Jobing.com Arena where the National Hockey League Phoenix Coyotes play. Other buildouts on the east side of town contain 200 miles of fiber and 342 nodes as part of the larger Scottsdale and Paradise Valley DAS builds.
The data deluge is pushing Crown Castle to work in tandem with carriers to meet the goals of new projects and to update existing networks.
“A lot of those systems were built back when voice was pre-eminent,” said Kavanagh. “It’s a different game now.”
AT&T also added a hub building in a back lot by the Paradise Valley town hall, where all of the antenna nodes in town are connected and monitored.
As for the DAS hidden in the faux cacti, it can be easy to miss, especially if you’re just driving through.
“You can’t drive along Tatum, Lincoln or McDonald and not run into them,” Kavanagh said. “The trick is whether you can see them.”