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Communications Wireless Networking Technology

Issues Surrounding Installation of a Cell Tower? 54

Posted by Cliff from the more-trouble-than-its-worth? dept.
But They Look Terrible as Trees asks: "My company has been approached by a developer who wants lease a section of our property to install a cell phone tower. The tower would be somewhere between 50 and 110 meters tall and would be located about 250 meters from our main building. I am curious what types of interference and other issues anyone may have noticed having a cell phone tower in the vicinity of their facility, such as disruption of 802.11, VHF radio, aesthetic issues, complaints from neighbors, or truly bizarre plots. Has anyone built their own tower and then leased space to providers on the tower?"
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Issues Surrounding Installation of a Cell Tower? More

Issues Surrounding Installation of a Cell Tower?

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  • Use it to your advantage (Score:5, Funny)

    by ignorant_coward ( 883188 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @03:47PM (#12750723)

    Make the tower look like a 110 meter penis. That'd be sure to get your company more attention and press coverage than in your wildest dreams!
  • ...like a tinfoil hat [wikipedia.org].

  • Um (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Neil Blender ( 555885 )
    You are seriously resorting to Slashdot for advice on the impacts of installing a cell phone tower?

    • Re:Um (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > You are seriously resorting to Slashdot for advice on the impacts of installing a cell phone tower?

      It doesn't sound like the poster was asking for a technical analysis, just anecdotes. Considering the last hyperlink in the request, I'm not sure if the poster is all that serious. However, I think this is an interesting topic since a tower is going up just a few blocks from my house and efforts through community action to thwart its installation were unsuccessful. This seems like a perfect forum to h

    • Re:Um (Score:5, Informative)

      by VeriTea ( 795384 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @04:46PM (#12751384) Journal
      It seems perfectly reasonable that he would ask Slashdot, after all, someone like myself might take the time to write back...

      I am an RF Engineer, and I provide consulting services to the wireless industry including expert testimony supporting tower placement, interference analysis, RF exposure reports, and other such studies.

      Interference will likely be a non-issue, but you don't have to take my word for it. You can ask the provider to supply an intermod study that includes any equipment you have concerns about. You will need to give them the location, make, model, and frequency of the equipment you have questions about.

      Aesthetic issues / neighbors - this is really a matter of location. I personally think that most towers don't look too bad, certainly much better then power lines at least. You really won't know how big these issues will be until the public meeting. In some places (like the meeting I will be testifying at next week) a small tower is a huge issue, in other places no one cares. You probably have a feel for the community you are in.

      You might have some say in how the tower looks. I say might because there are almost always other landowners that would be quite happy to receive the rent that you would otherwise receive. If you try to dictate too much the company could go elsewhere. At the very least it is reasonable to ask for landscaping and fencing that hides the base station equipment. Asking for a stealth tower will only work if no one else will lease space to them, or if the municipality 'demands' it. Stealth towers cost an arm, leg and three vital organs (and have maintenance issues), so they are seldom used if the carrier can avoid it.

      It is very important to know if the developer has carriers that are already interested or if he is developing on speculation. Building on speculation usually looks bad to a zoning board (rightfully so) and will engender hostile feelings if there is any community opposition (much more then a carrier supported build).

      I hope that helps some. If you have any more specific questions post them as responses to this post and I will try to get to them before the end of the week.

      • Informative, where are my mod points???

        Paul B.

      • Re:Um (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Andy Dodd ( 701 ) <atd7NO@SPAMcornell.edu> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @06:55PM (#12752715) Homepage
        Yeah, many people don't realize there are numerous ways to hide a cell site, especially if there's an existing tall building.

        There's a Verizon site on the top of Barton Hall on Cornell's campus, and there's basically no way anyone who doesn't know it's there and is looking for it can see the antennas - They're sector antennas on the sides of a cupola painted the same color as the building. Plus in that particular case they're dwarfed by the amateur radio club's monster HF Yagi. :)
        • ...While the SPCS site at Cornell is located on a 30' power pole in a substation along 366 just south of campus. I bet no one has noticed it either.

          Cornell is a real pain to work with and I had a tight deadline to get the Ithaca system up and running. Barton tower is a better site (it provides a more even distribution of capacity between the sectors), but you do what you can.

      • Us nerds might not mind the look of a cell tower but Average mom and designer pop do.
        Although you're right about the fact that they do look better than high tension lines, I personally like the towers that are made to look like trees of the area.

  • radio interference (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eagl ( 86459 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @03:58PM (#12750854) Journal
    I dunno how bad a tower would be, but my cell phone causes a lot of interference on my car radio. Setting my cell phone down near my computer also results in an occasional squeaking or beeping from my computer speakers.

    Would a tower somewhere on your property be better or worse? Dunno. Maybe you should take your car and some gear to someone else's cell tower and see if it causes interference.
    • You're using unsheilded speakers which will pick up your Nextel interference.
      • Except that this never happened to me with Verizon (about 4 different phone models IIRC), but happens all the time now that I have Cingular and a Nokia 6230 phone. Roommate also switched to Cingular and has some generic motorola flip that causes the same noises when his phone is chatting with the tower. Happens at work, in the car, and at home. Roommate said it generated the noises (albeit much louder) in a professional sound system during a presentation a few months ago as he was in the front row.

        It ma
        • it has nothing to do with the frequencies or power so much as the way the bitstream is transferred.

          CDMA (Verizon, Alltel, Sprint, US Cellular) uses a channel approx. 1.25MHz wide that, I believe, handsets transmit on constantly while on a a call. In this context CDMA refers to Qualcomm's cellular solution CDMA; CDMA can also refer to the much more abstract concept of code division multiple access [wikipedia.org]. Many other technologies, like 802.11b, V

          TDMA (time division) [wikipedia.org] based technologies (TDMA: AT&T/Cingular; GS

      • Not just one provider or phone. I've seen it with my phone and a colleague's phone as well. We're in Canada, he's on Telus with a Motorola RAZR, and I'm on Fido with a Sony Ericsson Z600. It's 'handy' since the majority of the time it precedes an incoming call by about 3 seconds, so it serves as a bit of early warning.
    • Out of curiosity, do you use Nextel? My friend has the same problem, but none of us have seen the behavior by anything but his Nextel phone...
    • This is a good reason to not switch to Cingular, or I assume any GSM carrier. I switched to Cingular because they were the only local service offering the Siemens S66 and now I get interference in audio (static and popping) *and* video (CRT goes wiggly). Apparently it happens during certain phone/tower communication and it *always* happens immediately preceding an incoming call. Which is actually kinda neat because I know the phone is going to ring before it actually does.

      You'll get comments about "Well

  • And health issues? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tetrode ( 32267 )
    I simply cannot imagine that getting that much radiation every day would be unharmful for your body.

    Mark
    • You might not want to go ouside then.

      You get far more exposure to radiation from using a cellphone than you do from living near a cell tower.

      It's R-Squared, stupid. You are a few centimeters from the phone and at least 30m from the tower. The tower just doesn't put out enough power to make a sizable impact on your exposure.

      • You get far more exposure to radiation from using a cellphone than you do from living near a cell tower.

        True. However, you get even more radiation by stepping out into the sun. Roughly 1000 watts/square meter in direct sunlight. Granted, most of it's in the visible light region, but you'll probably get more overall radio/microwave energy from the sun than you will from the tower 30 meters away. (Remember, it's not confined to a few well-defined channels.)

        It's R-Squared, stupid. You are a few c

    • How much is 'that much radiation'? Do you actually have a reason for disliking it, or are you just jerking your knee in a random manner?
    • I simply cannot imagine that getting that much radiation every day would be unharmful for your body.

      I've wondered that myself - there's a cell tower just outside the back of my employer's building. I've been here for almost 5 years, and so far haven't noticed any adverse health effects, butI have noticed something else - FM radio reception here is terrible - anyone know if this could be related to the nearby cell tower? I can't compare reception before and after, as the tower's been here all along.
      • Lots of things can screw up FM reception. Does your work building have a metal skin? Lots of computers inside, generating lots of broadband RF noise? Welding equipment, electrostatic precipitators, even some types of commercial lighting can cause local RF interference. This is also true with all sorts of other mechanical equipment can also compromise your radio reception.

        Most of the frequencies used for cell phones are in the upper UHF and lower microwave bands, from 850 Mhz to 1.8Ghz around here. By the

  • Is the juice worth the squeeze? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by myenigmaself ( 602643 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @04:01PM (#12750878)
    It'll look like crap and will deminish property values. If you've got neighbors, they'll hate you for it. You'd have to give me a boat load of cash to even consider it, but everyone's got their price. What's yours?

    • Yes (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Schezar ( 249629 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @04:18PM (#12751080) Homepage Journal
      "t'll look like crap and will deminish property values.

      Diminished property values are a good thing for people who don't plan to move any time in the near future. Lower property values = lower property taxes. Considering that this is a commercial property, he shouldn't give a rat's arse about "property values."

      "If you've got neighbors, they'll hate you for it."

      These are the same neighbors who also complain that their cell phones get poor reception. NIMBY doesn't quite cut it: these people are BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything). Luckily, they can't tell you what to do, and aren't likely your customers. They're not an issue at all.

      "You'd have to give me a boat load of cash to even consider it"

      Lots of land owners, even residential ones, lease plots of land to cell towers. They pay you a large monthly sum for the privilage, and usually throw in free cell phones. I'd say it's quite reasonable.

      • Re:Yes (Score:2)

        by fm6 ( 162816 )
        Diminished property values are a good thing for people who don't plan to move any time in the near future.
        So, you don't need to worry about an ugly cell tower next to your house, as long as you're sure it'll be torn down by the time you sell. Yeah, that's logical.

        Actually, I'm guessing you don't own a house -- you just like to lecture people who do.

    • But your phone would get excellent reception.
      • Maybe not. Many antennas are directionally aimed outwards away from the tower. That close to the tower and you may NOT actually get reasonable reception, simply because you are not within the directional arc of the antenna.

        • well I guess you could then build your own tower that would be within that arc and you would have really really good reception.

          actually, if you wanted perfect reception while tied to a wire, you could probobly do that without them building a cell tower...just use a real phone.

        • This is a somewhat common misconception. None of the antennas on the market today are efficent enought to cause this effect. If you were using a microwave dish you would certainly have this problem, but the panel antennas in common use leak enough signal in the non-radiating directions to provide good coverage to people nearby the tower (where near = 0.1 mi) Beyond that distance morphological effects will dominate. The exception to this is if you live in an underground bunker, in that case you won't hav
    • Data point: my next door neighbor was offered $1000/month for cell antennas on an existing tower. He declined.

      Next 50 times he asks me for a favor, I'm saying yes.
  • When my sister had Nextel, if she left her phone near her TV, the TV speakers would chirp about 5 seconds before the cell phone started ringing. If there isn't a problem with interference, tell your neighbors to go jump in a lake if they complain, and then laugh when they marvel at their improved cell signals once it's up. Consider yourself lucky. There are no decent cell signals in my area because the local AFB owns the airspace over 200'
  • Do it. Anyone who thinks cell towers are ugly can shove it. When I can't ride a commuter train and get a PCMCIA EV-DO air card working for the whole trip, that's a problem.

    If your building is sufficiently distant from the tower, you need not worry much about cancer or interference. Just don't go any closer to it than you have to. There are laws that prevent them from putting it too close to where people go, and there will be sufficient warning signs near the base.

    At the same time though, get your money's
  • A while back there was a neighborhood movement in my area against a cell phone tower. I didn't really have an opinion on the matter at the time. I still don't.

    Dan Bricklin [danbricklin.com] had two interesting log entries (1 [danbricklin.com]), (2 [danbricklin.com]) on this topic.

    There are pages at the FCC website here [fcc.gov] and here [fcc.gov] on RF safety considerations.

    Find towers near you. [cellreception.com]
  • From the article: ...or what the org was that trained us.

    I have never seen the term "org" used to describe something that "trains" outside of the realm of Scientology. And now that I've seen that connection, the unfounded paranoia makes sense...well, as much sense as Scientology makes...
  • I've been trying to lease out area in my 'South 40' to a cell phone company for over a year (cash, service or cash & service). No takers. I live in a rural area, and I'm smack in the middle of 10-50 mile 'dead zone' and outside that area by about another 15-15 miles, the service is horrible. The excuse I hear? There is no interest in cell phones in your area. Well, duh. No intrest, because no service. Everyone around here has a cell phone, they just can't use them at home.
    • What they mean is that they have higher priority areas to spend their capital budget in at the moment.

      It can cost in the range of $300000-$500000 to build a cell site. How many $50/month, unlimited airtime customers does it take to pay for that?

      They need to be convinced about the ROI before they start building.
      • That's a very true and vaild point. And if I had been told that, I wouldn't be so damn irritated. Instead I get the "no interest in cell phones" quote. Which doesn't really translate to, it's not cost effective. Combine that with the fact that towers are and have been built in even more remote / rural areas than mine here in Northern Minnesota (less population & less traffic), along with the fact that this is a pretty busy area for shipping (i.e. really big semi's), I'm thinking they haven't done homewo

  • We lease out space for a tower (Score:3, Informative)

    by skammie ( 802503 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @04:45PM (#12751381) Homepage
    At my plant there is a large cell tower in the back corner of our lot. We are 250-300 meters away from the tower, and experience no interference from the tower.

    It is understood that the cell phone company pays a hefty sum of money every month to my company because we own the property.

    I think the lease just covers or offsets our power and water bill.

  • Seriously Dude (Score:4, Funny)

    by ReciprocityProject ( 668218 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @04:52PM (#12751439) Homepage Journal
    Have your lawyers write up a separate page of the lease in which the cell-phone company agrees not to use the tower to mind control you, your employees, or your families. Frame it on your office wall next to your college degree. If the company resists signing it offer them a few dollars off.

    You can always take it down when you have to deal with a client who has no sense of humor. Buy a picture of a pretty flower to replace it with.

  • Issues regarding cell towers (Score:4, Informative)

    by N3Bruce ( 154308 ) <n3bruce AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @07:06PM (#12752839) Journal
    Depending where the property is located, the complaints about aesthetics, etc. can range from none at all in some areas, particularly if there are other broadcast, cellular, and public service radio towers in the area, to dealbreaking opposition near historic districts,upscale rural and suburban neighborhoods, or near other natural or manmade attractions.

    As far as health issues go, the only possible health issue I can reasonably see is that the tower crashes down on you during an extreme windstorm, and proper engineering will mitigate this risk to the point of being negligible. The amount of RF transmitted by a cell site is on a par with a police radio or other mobile radio service. The fact that the antennas are located a couple hundred feet up in the air means that in reality, that police radio in the cop car behind you is pumping more RF into you than the cell site you are directly under.

    The fact is, a properly located cell site will improve coverage for its customers, and can actually reduce exposure to RF. How can that be? Most modern cell phones adjust the power level of their transmitters based on the quality of the link they have to the best receive site in the area. I actually notice that my cell phone's battery needs recharging more if you are using it in an area of poor coverage, even if just in standby mode. A good cell site nearby reduces the power that the handset needs to maintain the link, reducing RF exposure to the user.

    As far as interference to services you may be using inside your facility, you might want to find out from the cell site operator what frequencies, power levels, and duty cycles they will be transmitting at. This applies not only for cell phones, but for other services that may piggyback onto the tower as well, a tower in a good location will often have antennas strung up the side of it as well. These other radio services might include paging, public safety radio services, amateur radio repeaters and digipeaters, FM broadcast radio transmitters, etc. If you do sensitive testing of radars or something of that ilk, it would pay you to know what is up there.

    In conclusion, I wouldn't be afraid to do it, as long as there is nothing up on the tower that would directly interfere with what you are doing now. Leasing space for cell sites is a profitable business around here, the local Volunteer Fire Dept receives about $12,000 a year to lease a 30 by 30 foot space to Verizon, and this is a very common arrangement. Besides the money, you might be able to write the lease to get services of your own on the tower, such as dispatch radios if you are in a service business, set up data links to remote offices, etc. Finally, another benefit might be the ability to use the services directly. Reliable 2 way radio services and WiFi internet access provided on that tower could actually enhance your operation. You may be able to make an arrangement for discounts on these services they may provide.

  • I've serviced a network for a friend of mine that has his own building. In the false attic of that building are two cell phone providers equipment that basicaly use the building as a tower. You wouldn't know its there unless you were told about it. As far as I know none of the network equipment or wireless network equipment has received any interference from either one of the installations. It's basicaly ignored unless one of the companies needs to get in to it and they have a separate entrance to the area.

  • . . . and they use a road on our property to get to it. That's the only access road to the tower, and we've worked out a deal with them to allow them to use our land.

    The biggest problem I've noticed is that a cell phone tower is never finished. It's not an uncommon sight to see several trucks go by in front of our house, headed for the tower. Some of these trucks are massive--I'm not sure what they are, but I do know they're massive enough to cause damage to the blacktop they drove over. Imagine the tr

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