ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 15, 1996 TAG: 9612170013
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
A PHONE in every pocket is the promise of the wireless-communications revolution. And also the threat.
The promise is wonderful: a link to assistance when the car breaks down; a ready locater when a child needs Mom, like, now, and she isn't home or at her office; even a survival tool when emergencies arise in the outdoors, for those willing to tame the wilderness experience with a tether to civilization.
The threat is the towers.
Oh, they won't hurt you. But they look like, well, heck.
And going wireless, not just with cellular phones but with newer, digital personal-communications systems, will require lots of towers to transmit radio signals between telephones. Lots. Roanoke County's recent decision to block a cellular tower in the picturesque Catawba Valley was gratifying for nearby residents trying to preserve the beauty of their landscape. But it was only one skirmish of many to come.
"It's coming. It's coming," warns Paul Rosa, executive director of the Potomac Conservancy in Annandale. That's in Northern Virginia where, in Fairfax, the first PCS network has been built, and its density first seen. "It's coming. And the next year is when you're going to see it."
What is coming in 1997 is the nationwide buildout of a PCS network. PCS uses digital technology that translates radio signals into the language of computers. This allows transmissions to be sent more efficiently, and eventually may allow PCS to offer special features, such as electronic mail and data transfer.
That's in the future, though. Today, PCS and cellular services are basically the same (though PCS can claim its coded transmissions are more secure from eavesdropping). But PCS operates at a lower power - and requires many more cell sites. Roughly, one every two miles.
The Federal Communications Commission will license six PCS companies in the Roanoke area. These, added to two cellular phone companies in every market, will provide lots of competition, presumably lowering prices. But they'll also add lots of antennas, which typically are mounted on 150- to 200-foot steel monopoles, embedded in concrete and topped by a triangular superstructure.
Ugly.
The thought of the wonderful service they will provide does nothing at all to pretty them up, either.
"There are only three issues as far as the public is concerned," Rosa agreed. "How much is it gonna cost? Do I get weekends free? And I don't wanna see it."
The classic NIMBY mentality: I want electricity/clean drinking water/trash pickup, etc., but as far as the infrastructure to provide them - the power stations/treatment plants/landfills - Not In My Back Yard, pal. Except with wireless communications, the infrastructure will have to be in virtually everyone's back yard. We'll see it not so much on mountaintops and in the countryside as where we live and work.
No need to despair, though.
"I think, with aesthetic techniques, Roanoke could get by relatively unscathed," Rosa said. "There is a good mix of residential, industrial and commercial land. You have a lot of industrial sites, a great electrical grid, smokestacks. Seventy-five percent of the needs could be met by placing antennas on existing structures," he guessed.
That is more than wild speculation. Rosa is familiar with Roanoke. He lived here till about four years ago, and had visited just the week before I talked to him.
And his position as head of the Potomac Conservancy land trust has made him something of an expert on antenna siting. In a side business, Digital Landscapes, Rosa is a consultant - perhaps the only consultant - on wireless aesthetics. Last year, he was summoned to the White House to brief presidential advisers on siting commercial antennas on federal properties.
"What I try and do is foster cooperation between companies and residents and local governments," he said.
"I saw it coming from all directions and picked up on the trend early. I got things turned around by expressing a community need," and, thus, winning the agreement of a reluctant administrator to put an antenna on a hospital roof, for example. "There are no towers visible along the Potomac River Gorge because of our efforts.
"There is a role community leaders can play" to win similar triumphs here - especially if they have behind them the persuasive power of neighborhoods. NIMBYs can help get phone companies to bear the added expense of camouflaging antennas as much as possible, and encourage owners of existing tall structures to let them be used, where possible, to avoid building a tower.
"Engineers love steel," Rosa said. "They love a beautiful tower."
Building a wireless network less offensive to the rest of us is "a matter of getting phone companies interested in thinking about the aesthetics. They come around when they realize: (a) it is often more cost-effective [than legal fights], and (b) this is your future customer base you're doing battle with."
"Aesthetic solutions don't jump in the minds of engineers." The public will have to put them there.
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