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Cell phone towers may seem mundane, but to get an idea of the ruckus they can cause consider the plight of Roxshire, an affluent neighborhood in Chesterfield County. Three years ago, telecommunications firms Triton PCS, Sprint and nTelos wanted to put cell phone transmitters atop a county-owned water tower. Reaction was intense. Residents consider the tower a local landmark and angrily opposed the plan. They claimed that the transmitters were unsightly and could produce harmful electromagnetic radiation. The county gave the project a resounding thumbs-down.

Last year, the telecom firms returned. This time, though, they came bearing gifts - $10,000 for community improvements from each company. They agreed to camouflage their gear and pulled out charts to demonstrate that emission of electromagnetic radiation would be negligible. Roxshire changed its mind and the companies won permission to install up to 27 thin, rectangular transmitters on the tower. "Obviously the money was a good incentive for us, but it wasn't the only reason we voted (to support the project)," says Roxshire Civic Association President Joe Hegner. "Wireless service in our area is pretty sporadic, and many Roxshire residents wanted better wireless communications service."

Such blandishments are the price of doing business for booming wireless companies. All across Virginia, telecom firms are striking deals with localities, property owners, school districts, churches and even other businesses to install cell phone and wireless equipment on a host of structures. They are becoming ubiquitous. Bucolic Albemarle County has more than 50 cell sites, bustling Fairfax County has 600 and remote spots in Southwestern Virginia even have a handful. Among the leading erectors of the towers in the state are American Tower, based in Boston, and Crown Castle of Woodlands, Texas.

The cellular sites symbolize the strong, if mercurial potential of the wireless industry. While it has taken recent hits, it still is forecasted to grow 30 percent to 40 percent annually, according to the Center for Wireless Telecommunications at Virginia Tech. By 2020, it's expected that more than half of all information transmitted anywhere in the world will involve wireless devices. An increasing number of businesses have begun relying on mobile work forces, too.

Business users accounted for nearly 46 million of the 88 million wireless subscribers in the U.S. last year, according to The Insight Research Corp. of Parsippany, N.J. Cell towers and other cell-transmission sites are essential for communications companies to provide reliable handoff of signals, especially as they roll out large networks for broad high-speed coverage to more and more customers.

Nearly 128,000 cell sites exist nationwide, including freestanding monopole towers and ordinary buildings equipped with special transmitters, antennae and other equipment. That includes about 27,000 cell sites that providers activated last year, an average of about 64 new sites each day, according to the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group. The cumulative capital investment topped $105 million.

Telecommunications companies claim to be using nearly 28,000 cell sites in Virginia, although the actual number of locations is far lower since multiple carriers often share space on the same cell site. This sharing arrangement, known as "collocation," has grown in popularity because telecommunications firms are being more cautious about large capital expenditures. Collocation helps companies reduce costs while at the same time provide more saturated coverage of cell-phone and other wireless services.

Sharing has important implications. The tech wreck exerted a profound impact on the telecommunications sector - perhaps nowhere more so than in Virginia. Various Virginia-born telecom companies went belly up or sold off assets in the last 18 months. Even well-heeled companies have scaled back spending plans. It can cost carriers up to $1 million to erect new monopoles, the tall towers frequently seen off interstate highways. Monopoles also elicit the loudest outcry from communities, especially in bucolic settings. By collocating, as in Roxshire, multiple carriers lease space to attach their equipment to water towers, building roofs, church steeples, power lines and other facilities that provide the needed height.

Collocation also provides benefits to other businesses and property owners. Dominion Virginia Power won't disclose its average monthly collocation revenue, citing confidentiality agreements with carriers. But since 1996, when it approved its first cell site, Dominion has endorsed similar agreements at about 250 transmission stations in Virginia. All told, Dominion grants access to 15 different providers: five each in Northern Virginia, Tidewater and Central Virginia. "We really didn't pursue this business. We thought once carriers got the sites they wanted, they would build out their networks and that would be it," says Greg Frahm, a technical advisor for the Richmond-based electric utility.

Yet the burgeoning cellular industry changed all of that. For example, before the Federal Communications Commission began granting more spectrum licenses in the mid-1990s, Fairfax County had only a sprinkling of cellular transmission sites. Although covering fewer than 400 square miles, Fairfax now contains about 600 cell sites, including about 350 monopoles. It's not unusual for multiple companies to share tower space, with each one installing between 9 and 12 antennae. "Many of our buildings look like porcupines," says David Marshall, assistant director of Fairfax County's planning division.

Fairfax County earns $15,000 to $20,000 in money a year by enabling wireless carriers to affix equipment atop fire stations, school buildings and park lighting, says Marshall. That doesn't include property taxes and other fees. "We look at having wireless (networks) as a necessary part of our infrastructure. Companies here have told us it's a very important component," says David Marshall, assistant director of Fairfax County's planning division.

Collocation generally can cut deployment costs for carriers by 50 percent to 75 percent, and zoning requirements are far less restrictive. "It's an overwhelming economic incentive to use existing structures, as well as helpful from a local zoning standpoint. Most local and county governments have said they want carriers to either share facilities or utilize existing facilities wherever possible," says Chris Daugherty, a spokesman for Reston-based Nextel Communications. "When you see a wireless company building a tower, it's most often the last resort."

The million-dollar price tag for new towers is so high that carriers are striking deals with an emerging subset of companies known as tower-management operators. Telecom firms sometimes will absorb the upfront construction cost, then sell the completed tower to a tower-operating company to recoup its investment. The tower operator in turn will rent space on the tower to multiple carriers, charging each a monthly fee.

Carriers with markets in Virginia want to carve a slice of the U.S. wireless data market, estimated to eclipse $8 billion in revenue by 2006. Many also are ramping up to offer Virginians more powerful third-generation wireless services and products, known as 3G. Vendors say 3G-equipped phones and other devices could enable users to wirelessly download attachments and other large files, all at faster speeds and over longer distances. For this to happen, telecom firms need to either invest in building more powerful cell towers or juice up the capacity of their existing ones.

Citing competitive reasons, most carriers in Virginia won't disclose details of their ongoing investments in cell towers here, the number of cell sites they occupy, or even how many Virginia subscribers they've enrolled. Waynesboro-based nTelos is an exception, revealing that it uses more than 570 cell sites in Virginia. The 120-year-old company - it's the reincarnation of the former CFW Communications - plans to spend between $55 million and $60 million upgrading equipment, boosting capacity and enhancing coverage in the state in 2002. nTelos also expects to unveil a 3G-compatible phone this year for its markets, which besides Virginia include West Virginia and parts of North Carolina and Kentucky, although rate plans for using 3G applications won't be available until 2003.

Community activists and environmentalists are resigned to the fact that cell sites are here to stay. But at least in Virginia, they aren't going quietly. Though numerous scientific studies have yet to yield substantive proof, concerns persist about the potentially harmful effects of radiation from electromagnetic fields produced by cellular transmitters. While it does not require wireless carriers to register every cell site, the FCC still precludes localities from considering potential health risks of towers when deliberating land-use matters. The thorny issue came up in the Roxshire case. Conservationists also point out that particularly high towers can confuse birds migrating at night. Then, of course, there are the worries about spoiling scenic vistas, especially on the tops of mountain ridges. "One of our major concerns is the community impact of these things cropping up all over the place, whether they be in residential neighborhoods, on the tallest peaks in the Piedmont or in historic districts," says Jolly deGive, a spokeswoman for the Piedmont Environmental Council in Roanoke.

Despite such worries, wireless carriers put thousands of new cell sites into operation each year. For carriers in Virginia to deliver advanced high-speed mobile services, they'll need to find even more places for installing more towers. The Roxshire story could become common as neighborhoods try to cash in on their tower power.

Return to Virginia Business - July 2002