Sprint wants to dress up cell tower, town says no
By Michael Caputo 
posted Sep 21st 2007 10:05AM
posted Sep 21st 2007 10:05AM
As the number of wireless customers grows, carriers must add cell towers to fill in gaps in coverage and dead spots. More often that not, there's a heated debate between local residents and the wireless carrier regarding where to place the cell sites and how to make them as visually unobtrusive as possible. In the small town of Philomont, Virginia, residents have turned down Sprint's offer to build and disguise a local cell site as a 106-foot barn silo. The cell tower was described as "visually obscene" by one of the local residents, suggesting the company instead share a 100-foot flagpole already used by Verizon. Naturally, Sprint's not so keen on the idea, pouting and screaming that it doesn't like to share (actually, they had some excuse about not having access to the best spots on the flagpole because they're already in use) -- but any way you slice it, take note that rural Virginians value their silo-free skyline over extra bars of reception.
106 foot erect penis cel tower..
that would be awesome.
I have this issue in my area...
"we want cell phone coverage"
"ok well we need to have a tower in you area to get you up and running"
"WOAH...we don't want a tower here"
"then how are you gonna get signal?"
"YOU figure it out, we just want it, and we want it NOW!!"
what do you think this stuff works via satelite and the signal floats around on baloons all day???
idiots haha
Today at EngadgetMobile I learned my penis can double for a cell phone transceiver enclosure. Though to be completely honest I'm not sure how I can use that knowledge for my plans of world domination.
"but any way you slice it, take note that rural Virginians value their silo-free skyline over extra bars of reception."
This should actually be..
"but any way you slice it, take note that some luddite rural Virginians value their silo-free skyline over others' ability to call 911."
Some loudmouth freaks ruin it for everyone. And yes, luddites who don't want towers can be found in the richest urban enclaves too.
Many of the cell phone towers are ridiculously large and hideous, and sorry that you can't use your cellphone there, but that is how it goes. Cell phone companies come in with promises of how the tower won't stand out, but then often don't follow through. A quick google search showed this one: http://www.doyoufeelloved.com/photos/archives/images/tree_antenna.jpg
Which just goes to show how bad they can look.
Sounds like where I live. We had crap reception because the village residents refuse to build a tower to house a couple providers because "it would not look good."
Where I live they stopped building a highway because it would be too ugly, so instead all of the traffic that would go on that highway has to use a 20 mile long one lane in each direction road which takes 2 hours to travel on during rush hour.
Great job.
Part of the problem is our country's petri dish approach to wireless technologies. Like, hey, let's see just how many different frequencies and network types we can jam into this place before it's just a useless sea of indistinguishable RF noise. If putting up a cell tower meant better reception for everyone, there (at least in theory) should be a lot less opposition. But instead, when Carrier X wants to put up a tower, it only benefits a fraction of the residents. And chances are good that if a person lives there, they're not with that carrier anyway since their coverage sucks.
Actually this isn't completely accurate. I am a cell tech for a nationwide carrier and most of the time my company would rather co-locate then stack their own tower. Sometimes though, you can't get the rad center or location you want (or need) and you resort to building your own tower (usually with plenty of space to allow future co-location). After having been to a couple of county hearings I have seen first hand that that most people want coverage in their area but not the tower and every so often you get some hysterical mother who thinks their kids are going to get brain damage if it is to close to their house.
I have one site that has at least 7 carriers on it with over 57 coax lines going up the tower, the RF propagation at the site is not indistinguishable or all of these carriers would not have co-located here.
We have the same issue in the Adirondack State Park. The park agency is the most strict agency in the state. The cell phone companies are trying to work with the agency to construct towers but are not happy with anything unless if it is invisible, hey who knew.
They should go back to the town and offer to put up an Eiffel Tower instead