
DATE: Sunday, April 13, 1997                TAG: 9704130038

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TONI GUAGENTI, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:  133 lines

DIGITAL PHONE TOWERS CALLED BAD CONNECTION

Two miles from the din of Virginia Beach Boulevard traffic lies a tranquil upper-middle class neighborhood with a well-traveled bike path, mature trees and breathtaking landscaping.

This time of year, Little Neck residents pedal along that path or walk their dogs while basking in the area's annual transformation from winter to spring.

Residents who live along this Lynnhaven River peninsula are not ready to have that scenery encroached by the information age. Although they might already have Internet access, cordless phones or cable television in their homes, they have drawn the line at digital wireless communication.

Little Neck residents recently told the big boys of the wireless communications world: Don't call us, we'll call you, when it comes to erecting towers to bring digital signals to their neighborhood.

``We're not against progress,'' said Sonja Perdue, one of several residents who recently led a charge against the towers. ``If they want to bring their signal back here, theycan do it without erecting a big, ugly tower. They need to find a better way to do that.''

The Virginia Beach City Council agreed.

Council members turned down a request last month from Lynnhaven United Methodist Church on Little Neck Road to build two, 135-foot communications towers to accommodate the needs of 360 Communications, AT&T Wireless Services, PrimeCo Personal Communications and GTE.

AT&T and PrimeCo are entering the Virginia Beach market by opening digital service to customers. GTE and 360 are trying to beef up their signals on the Little Neck Peninsula for cellular phone customers.

Digital and cellular services operate on two different frequencies on the radio spectrum. Digital signals can carry more information, or more phone calls, than cellular service, but, with digital, more towers are needed because the signals aren't carried as far.

With digital, there's no fading in or out or static, the signal is clearer and more fraud resistant.

In the future, the technology might even be used by the power company to read meters via computers at a central site, instead of workers having to enter the neighborhoods.

For now, Little Neck residents say, existing service will do.

John Haver, vice president of the Middle Plantation Civic League, a group of about 425 homes in Little Neck, said he has never had a problem with his cellular phone.

Plus, he said, the peninsula is not a heavily traveled area. If people are in Little Neck and need to use a phone, maybe they should be using the telephone in their homes, he said.

But Jeff Gardner, president of 360 Communications, said coverage is a problem.

Little Neck is one of the city's poorest coverage areas with cellular service because of its location, said Gardner. Despite being centrally located in the city's heavily populated northern half, it is surrounded by water on three sides and covered with large trees.

This means there's more static interference and a higher possibility of dropping a call.

``Depending on the time of day and the weather, (your service) may not work,'' said Gardner, who lives on the peninsula. ``From our perspective it's a grave concern for our customers who live back there.''

Bill Gambrell, a Virginia Beach planner who has worked with the cellular companies in finding tower sites for more than six years, said the Little Neck Peninsula is also an area that lacks digital coverage.

He said PrimeCo is nearly 90 percent complete with finding sites, and AT&T isn't too far behind.

``Anytime you put towers in residential communities you have to be concerned about the compatibility,'' Gambrell said. ``We're always trying real, real hard to work with residential communities.''

``We're very concerned with all the locations of these cell sites that are established in the community,'' he said. ``The city has a policy that encourages the (personal communications service) providers to go on tall buildings and existing towers.''

Gambrell said about 90 percent of the city's 60-plus cell sites are either mounted on buildings or power poles and are shared by the different providers in the area, which is a city requirement.

He estimated that only a couple of towers have been turned down by the City Council in the past five years. The companies make sure the sites are compatible with the areas where they are built, he said.

City Councilman William W. Harrison Jr., who represents Little Neck in the Lynnhaven Borough, said the item was turned down because too many people were against it. More than 700 people signed a petition against the towers. Little Neck has about 1,500 homes.

Harrison said he won't support a new application to erect towers on the peninsula until residents say they want them.

And that probably won't happen until residents feel they've been left in the ``dark ages,'' he said. ``Maybe they'll change their tune.''

And it's their tune to change, say residents.

They told the City Council emphatically that their neighborhood and the towers don't gel.

They're unsightly and don't belong in a residential area, Haver said. ``No matter where you place them, they're going to show.''

Eddie Bourdon, attorney for Lynnhaven United Methodist Church, said city and wireless communications officials have spent more than two years looking for a ripe site on the peninsula, and the church was the best spot.

R.J. Nutter II, an attorney representing AT&T Wireless, agreed.

``It was one of the only few institutional uses in Little Neck at all,'' in the peninsula's center and on the main road, Nutter said. ``We didn't want to go off on a side street.''

The church would have received $60,000 per year to lease the site for the towers.

Bourdon said it made sense to have the money going to a church that could give something back to a community instead of an individual pocketing the cash.

Gardner said 360 is disappointed that the towers were turned down.

``We're back to the drawing board,'' he said. ``We're not into suing the city or a community of people who we do business with.

``Part of 360's strategy is to be a good community player.''

The wireless phone providers are also backed by Congress and federal regulators, who are aggressively promoting this expansion of services. The Federal Communications Commission in the past two years, for instance, auctioned licenses to six additional providers of cellularlike services in each market, including Hampton Roads.

And, the Virginia Department of Transportation is just one of many state and local agencies throughout the country seeking to capitalize on the explosion in telecommunications services by leasing state-owned lands for cell sites.

Residents, though, in Little Neck, aren't buying the boom.

``We don't want them ever,'' Perdue said. ``We believe that they will develop better technology to accomplish the same job; that's what we want.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

PHONE TOWERS: HOW THEY STACK UP

SOURCE: Staff research

[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]

Photo

CHARLIE MEADS/The Virginian-Pilot

Marcelene Schwegler, left, John Haver and Sonja Perdue are opposed

to a cellular phone company erecting towers on the Lynnhaven United

Methodist Church's property - behind them - in the Little Neck area.