
DATE: Sunday, November 9, 1997              TAG: 9711100235

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  170 lines

TOWER-BUILDING BOOM NOT LIKELY TO END SOON AS INDUSTRY GROWS, SO WILL DISPUTES

During the past 15 years, wireless phone sites have sprung from the earth as dandelions sprout from their wind-borne spores. Wherever a phone signal drops, a transmission site sprouts.

On downtown Norfolk rooftops. In Virginia Beach neighborhoods. On stadium light posts. And often, most noticeably, on free-standing transmission towers.

By last year, more than 22,000 transmission sites covered the country, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Those who think the sites are scars on city neighborhoods and rural landscapes face ongoing construction of the wireless phone network.

In the next 10 years, 100,000 more wireless antennas will pop up, industry experts estimate.

That ``buildout'' may only escalate the number of battles among local zoning authorities, neighborhood residents and wireless phone companies.

A tower dispute in Virginia Beach's upscale Little Neck area has pitted neighbor against neighbor, the city against two telecommunications giants and residents against Lynnhaven United Methodist Church. The wireless phone companies had arranged to pay $60,000 a year to lease church land to erect two 135-foot transmission towers.

``It's all a matter of what you're willing to do to have a wireless phone that works over every square foot of this area,'' says Sonja Perdue, a Little Neck resident who opposes the towers.

Perdue, along with the Virginia Beach City Council, wound up on the losing side of the Little Neck battle.

The council rejected a request by digital wireless companies PrimeCo Personal Communications and AT&T Wireless and the church to build the towers.

The companies and the church appealed in U.S. District Court in Norfolk, saying the decision violated aspects of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Last month, Judge Raymond A. Jackson agreed.

The Virginia Beach dispute may have gone farther than most cell site feuds; the council heeded Jackson's ruling and approved the towers - then appealed his ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Wireless phones: a utility?

The disputes are the legacy of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. And the precedents for that law go back almost 150 years.

In 1850, the federal government wanted to spur settlement in vast regions of the South and Midwest. It issued land grants to companies that would build railroads into those areas.

In the 1990s, the government wanted to boost competition in telecommunications services. It auctioned different spectrums of the public airwaves to analog cellular and digital phone providers.

Last year, Congress and the president used the Telecommunications Act to clear the way for the construction of those networks. The act lays out a tricky path for municipalities, like Virginia Beach, that end up in zoning disputes brought on by the transmission sites.

The Telecommunications Act stipulates that it does not limit the authority of local or state land-use bodies. But it also says that local and state governments cannot prohibit the ``provision of wireless personal services.'' Localities can deny requests for transmitters at specific locations, but the denial must be in writing so the courts can review it.

The law prohibits a locality from banning the antennas.

Congress and the FCC argue that the budding wireless networks will potentially benefit everyone. Wireless services could compete with traditional wire-line phone companies. Wireless communications can make businesses more efficient, including package delivery services, car rental agencies and home health care, the FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau says in a fact sheet on locating transmission facilities.

Those improvements should result in lower costs to the consumer, the FCC states.

The telecommunications act mandates that the federal government help wireless license holders get access to ``preferred sites'' on federal land.

``It really is a utility,'' says Greg Rabchuk, general manager of 360 Communications Hampton Roads market. ``I don't think many people view it as gas or electricity - they probably view it more like cable.''

360 Communications and GTE Wireless, traditional cellular carriers, have been serving Hampton Roads for the past decade. They had the advantage of grabbing transmission sites to build their networks before towers proliferated and opponents organized.

360 has about 150 to 175 transmission sites in Southeastern Virginia, according to the company. GTE Wireless has more than 225 towers in its Virginia region stretching from Roanoke to Virginia Beach, says Howard Bower, director of the region for that company.

Both continue to add sites. These days, though, many new sites are not on stand-alone towers.

``With the awareness of the public, it's getting more and more difficult,'' Bower said. ``As the difficulty of getting sites goes up, the price goes up.''

But more sites will be needed as more people buy and use the phones, the companies say.

Traditional cellular carriers such as GTE Wireless or 360 Communications have 392 channels on which they can offer service. A mobile phone to mobile phone call uses two channels, a mobile-to-land call uses one.

As more customers sign up, the companies can squeeze more out of the finite number of channels by reusing the frequencies in other parts of the market. But they have to turn down the power output of each site, so the signals don't bump.

That requires more sites. So do the demands of mobile phone users.

Creative solutions

The $60,000-a-year fee the companies agreed to pay Lynnhaven United Methodist is high, but not far from the going rate, says GTE Wireless's Bower.

The lease payments were to be split among 4 carriers: AT&T and PrimeCo, and their cellular counterparts, GTE and 360. That works out to about $15,000 a year each.

Landowners in rural areas can charge a wireless company up to $600 a month for a tower site, Bowers says. That fee can double in urban areas.

A tower site, including excavating the land, the equipment building below it, and the electrical equipment inside, can cost between $500,000 and $750,000.

Those costs, along with the public opposition toward towers, have sent the companies scurrying to find alternatives. One of the most popular is called ``co-location.''

Co-location refers to two or more antennas being clamped onto one tower. Most localities are mandating that newly built towers host more than one antenna, says Laura Loop, community affairs director for AT&T Wireless's southeast Virginia office.

During the initial phase of the cellular buildout, 70 percent to 80 percent of sites were on new towers. AT&T Wireless says it has about 100 sites stretching from Virginia Beach to New Kent County and 80 percent are co-located or on an existing structure, Loop says.

``It may cost double to build a tower for co-location,'' Loop says, ``but if you're allowing two other carriers on the tower you have two swaps available.''

AT&T Wireless, which expects to begin offering service by March 1998, has antennas on a downtown Hampton building and co-located with stadium lights at a Peninsula high school.

That company also worked a controversial deal with the Virginia Department of Transportation along the Interstate in Suffolk to co-locate antennas with traffic safety equipment.

Suffolk viewed the AT&T Wireless-VDOT arrangement as usurping its land-use authority. The city halted the construction, then worked out a compromise with the parties.

The city now requires companies to make a genuine effort to co-locate, to erect a tower only to the minimum height needed, and to plant vegetation as a screen around the bottom of the structure.

Other attempts to disguise towers go farther. The Larson Company builds artificial environments for zoos, theme parks and aquariums, including Busch Gardens and the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

Four years ago, the Tucson, Ariz.-based company entered the antenna camouflage business. It has disguised wireless towers as Northern White Pines, palm trees and - in Arizona - as a 30-foot-tall cactus.

One drawback, however, is that the composite plastic disguises can easily double the cost of a $60,000 tower.

Nonetheless, public opposition has driven demand. Jay Nichols, project manager for Larson's utility camouflage division, says the company disguised seven towers in 1995, twice that in 1996, and 32 so far this year.

They expect that up to 4 percent of the 100,000 antennas that will go up over the next 10 years will be structures that need to be disguised.

``Typically, the cellular service carriers are not excited about presenting our product because it does increase the cost,'' Nichols says. ``They will not offer it until it is the last alternative.''

As Nichols said, business is picking up. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

FACTS

The wireless phone industry signed up its 50 millionth customer

in July.

(It reached that milestone in 14 years; it took 24 years for

television to reach 50 million homes.)

There are more than 22,000 transmission sites in the country.

More than 100,000 additional sites are expected to be built in

the next 10 years to serve user growth and the wireless digital

systems.

Additional sites don't serve only wireless phone customers, but

also one- and two-way paging and wireless Internet services.