ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, October 18, 1996 TAG: 9610180078
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM
More Roanoke Valley residents will have a better chance of getting wireless cable television from R&B Telephone Co. now that it can build a tower on Tinker Mountain.
The Botetourt County Board of Supervisors this week approved a special-exemption permit allowing the 195-foot tower on property owned by Lee Hartman Jr.
The tower will let R&B offer wireless cable to customers all over the valley, provided their homes aren't in deep depressions or behind hills, said Bob Nay, vice president for marketing at R&B.
The tower also will counteract a problem called the "umbrella effect," Nay said. Some Cloverdale and Daleville residents have been unable to use cable because they live too close to the base of Tinker Mountain, where R&B is renting space on a 185-foot antenna owned by GTE. Those residents cannot establish a line of sight between their homes and the transmitter.
Nay said the tower should enhance service for R&B's beeper customers, and it will house antennas for its planned personal communication service, a less expensive cellular phone system.
R&B's tower will be the eighth on Tinker Mountain. Nay said it will be gray with narrow whip antennas, making it less of an eyesore than some older towers.
The Federal Communications Commission must register the tower and ensure that R&B's signals don't interfere with other signals, but Nay said he doesn't expect that to be a problem. The tower should be up and operational early next year, he said.
LENGTH: Short : 37 linesby CNB