Cell Tower News: Climber deaths bring scrutiny to carriers

Welcome to this week’s edition of cell tower industry news, brought to you by Towercrews.net.
It is an understatement to say that this year has been tragic so far when so many tower climbers have died within the first quarter. In response, OSHA handed out stern warnings and NATE launched a 100% tie-off campaign, and now concerns about this issue are again moving beyond the wireless communications community. Frontline posted an in-depth article revisiting the research they released in 2012 related to cell tower deaths, updating it with the latest series of events. It’s a great recap worth a read, but there are two important, newer pieces of information one should take away from it.
First is OSHA’s renewed commitment to following the line of contracts (responsibility) related to a climber’s death from each sub-contractor all the way up to the carriers. OSHA director David Michaels seems to be the one spearheading this movement. In the past blame has stopped at subcontractors, with carriers left untouched. This new accountability makes sense and it’s hard to argue with the sentiment, but thus far no carrier has been publicly fined or even admonished in any way for any of the recent deaths. Time will tell how this development plays out.
Second is Sprint’s public statements about its commitment to tower safety. This is good news since at least four deaths since the beginning of 2013 have been on towers with Sprint’s service. The company announced that it will work with PICS Auditing to give thorough examinations of a prospective new contractor company’s training of its employees, background, etc. before hiring the contractor to work on a large scale tower-related project. It’s a small but important step towards safer tower sites and increased accountability.
In other news, the ACLU is making headlines again this week by filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI, DEA, and Secret Service about cell tower dumps. We reported last week on the ACLU’s mission to go after those cities that use fake cell towers to grab user data. This latest action is in perfect alignment with the group’s mission to clear the air surrounding the national/state government and municipalities’ use of information collected by cell towers and the potential violation of citizens’ privacy rights. In a press release on its site, the ACLU stated, “If we’re going to protect the privacy of our location information, and the right of free association that such privacy enables, it is important that we know under what standards the government is obtaining tower dump data, and what they do with it afterwards.”
Remember last week when a huge uproar occurred on Shelter Island, New York, over a photo posted on Facebook of a tower mock-up next to the fire station? This small town’s saga gets more complicated, which makes it interesting enough to report on. Still no one has claimed responsibility for posting it on Facebook, but a local resident did come forward, admitting he created the image to give the public an idea of what the size comparison would be between the proposed tower and the firehouse. The funniest thing about this uproar? It’s all speculation–there is no formal proposal pending before the city’s commission for a tower! A whole town and city council in turmoil over the what-ifs of a cell tower. Good luck to the company that does decide to go forward with one there…
AT&T and Verizon have made significant investments in the telecom infrastructure of Texas. Verizon announced investment in wireline infrastructure to the tune of $348 million in 2013. The announcement followed AT&T’s report on what it has done for the Lone Star State. The telco giant explained a three year project that completed at the end of 2013 in which the company made significant upgrades to both wireline and wireless communications. These took place primarily in the Houston area, with a focus on 4G LTE coverage. The release doesn’t explicitly call out the building of new towers, but we know to increase the 4G LTE coverage in a significant way, at least some of their $1.25 billion investment went toward the tower industry.