Cellular Sites Become a Towering Concern for Residents in the Hollywood Hills

That's one heck of a smear job. The interpretation of the Telecom Act in the article is creative too:

"The use of telephone and power poles as cellular sites was approved in 1996 when the federal Telecommunications Act designated cellular facilities as utilities."

 

And why do I want to move back to SoCal?

... Oh, That's right the weather, beach, and EVDO!

If they don't want the sites they can put them on the telephone pole behind my uncles house. The Sprint & T-Mobile panels will make for a great improvement.

 

Most of these complaints I hear are aimed towards Cingular and TMobile. Obviously for them it's all down to the dollar amount and not having to obtain a permit is obviously much cheaper. For one reason or another the Sprint and Verizon Wireless equipment in these hillside areas is much less intrusive.

 

That is a generalized subjective, albeit incorrect statement. CDMA BTS' aren't that different, aesthetically speaking. And a panel is a panel.

 

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320) BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102 UP.Link/6.3.0.0.0)

I think big antennas are beautiful, so like I said...it's subjective.

 

Uh, larry, it's frequency, not tech that matters. Cingular is 850 MHz. Their antennas will be about twice as long as 1900MHz (Sprint and T-Mobile) for performance. Nothing to do with GSM vs CDMA and everything to do with cellular vs PCS.

 

Each region seems to approach their sites differently. In my home state, most towers are 200' monstrosities, but at least they're shared. Here, most sites are on building tops or monopoles. Sprint's original sites are very tall monopoles, but with a broad 9-antenna array. To reduce complaints, now every carrier has switched to simple 50' poles that resemble flag poles.

As a result, the carriers who are adding the most new sites are building only these 'fat flag poles'. That means Verizon and T-Mobile have the most new, inobtrusive sites, and Sprint and Cingular are known for their uglier tower-top arrays. One is GSM, one is not. Sprint is not adding many new sites, so theirs here are old, thus "ugly."

Along so many CA non-interstate highways, I see those unsightly boxes used as cellular antennas. However, they are not as unsightly as the poles themselves. Take a drive along the scenic Pacific Coast Highway, especially in Malibu, and note how hideous the power poles are. There, Sprint originally was only allowed the inobtrusive monopoles. Then, the later-arriving T-Mobile & Cingular installations were able to take advantge of the utility-poles-as-cell-sites rule, and get the ugly award. It's all in the market & the timing.

 

There isn't one Sprint monopole in Malibu, heck, no one out there has a monopole. Every carrier is attached to a building of some sort in that area. There are different engineering principles that are brought to light when one of your sector's is the ocean. Most of the sites on PCH are single sector sites, all facing up PCH.

Both Sprint and VzW did PCH right, aesthetically, as all of their sites physically on PCH are just DAS systems not full blown BTS's. I think both together have a total of 15 full BTS sites from Santa Monica to the Ventura County line but numerous DAS sites in between.

Sprint, at the time was the only carrier to join the Southern California Joint Pole Committee, which was how back in 1996 they were allowed to install their CMI system, which was all strand mounted equipment, much like CATV. Being a member certainly made it easier when trying to get space on the pole. The other carriers caught onto this and finally started joining. I think both Verizon Wireless and Cingular are now members.

For whichever reason, Sprint and VzW paint their cabinets to match, and typically use smaller antennas. When Cingular and TMobile started covering the hills and canyons everything was pole mount. A good example is this, a typical Cingular pole mount http://gallery.wirelessadvisor.com/showimage.php?i=2467 now compare that to a typical VzW http://gallery.wirelessadvisor.com/showimage.php?i=2700 and a typical Sprint (This is a vault one though) http://gallery.wirelessadvisor.com/showimage.php?i=2696

VzW and Sprint both make excellent use of vaults to locate the equipment. For TMobile and Cingular, at least in the LA market, since they're so far behind coverage wise they're having to do everything with as few steps as possible. Mount it all physically on the pole? Great! No city permits needed!

 

I very well could be wrong as I'm not involved much with development, but I think LA City is still no permits unless you're pulling in electrical from somewhere other than that pole.

 

I believe that's what it is. Every carrier out in general Malibu area has a permit number on a plate attached to the cell, if it's a pole mount.

 

Except that in California, Cingular use both.