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Issues Surrounding Installation of a Cell Tower?
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?"
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.
You are seriously resorting to Slashdot for advice on the impacts of installing a cell phone tower?
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.
I simply cannot imagine that getting that much radiation every day would be unharmful for your body.
Mark
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?
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'
Free MacMini
"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.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
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 worth. Demand free phone service for everyone and as much cash as you can get. Other than perfect reception at work the best part about getting a cell tower on your property is all the great stuff the phone company will give you. Maybe you can get some OC3 action in the house.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
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 had two interesting log entries (1), (2) on this topic.
There are pages at the FCC website here and here on RF safety considerations.
Find towers near you.
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.
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.
"Fortunately, I'm adhering to a very strict drug regimen to keep my mind limber..."
Informative, where are my mod points???
Paul B.
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.
Upstairs Dog, Downstairs People.
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.
For starters, don't put it in Lisa's room!
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 themselves, they are probably not likely to cause interference with FM radio, which operates between 88 and 108 Mhz. Other services on the tower might be able to desense cheaply designed tuners on inexpensive radios, such as pagers, fire, police, and other radio services that operate in the VHF portion of the radio spectrum.
The tower itself, along with tall buildings in the area can partially block some signals, and reflect some signals back to the antenna, causing multipath interference, This is most familiar on Analog TV signals as a ghost image offset to the main image. On radio, it causes uneven reception of signals.
Finally, evaluate the lay of the land around the building. Normally high ground favors good radio reception at FM frequencies. A building located in a valley or on the back side of a hill between it and a station's transmitter will normally have poorer reception than one located on high ground.
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. The only thing that isn't ignored is the fact that it makes the buildings owner money.
Specks
Batteries not included
. . . 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 trouble of getting a cell phone company to pay for property damages--that's something you might have to deal with.
And there was the time a worker fell off the tower and there was a swarm of emergency vehicles, but that was an isolated incident.
Basically, if you allow a cell phone tower to be placed on your land, be prepared to deal with the company's employees and contractors who come by.