Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Antennas in Steeples Help Cell Phones Ring

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 May 2003 17:36:41 -0400

Antennas in Steeples Help Cell Phones Ring

Churches across the U.S. are benefiting from cell phone companies' needs for
antenna sites to transmit calls. The churches can receive between $1,000 and
$3,000 a month when they let the companies build and maintain antenna sites
in their steeples. Increasingly, wireless companies are finding creative ways to
disguise and presence of the antennas. The disguises are ways around
community objections to how the cell sites look.
==========================================================================================

May 1, 2003

Cellphones Ring Out With the Aid of a Steeple

By DAVID L. MARGULIUS

N June 1973, lightning struck the steeple of the United Methodist Church in the small
coastal town of Ipswich, Mass. The
steeple, a prominent landmark since 1860 that appears on the town's seal, was badly
damaged and had to be removed. The
church lacked the money for a replacement, estimated to cost more than $100,000.

Marty Katz for The New York Times
HIDDEN WITHIN - Cellular antennas like the
ones visible below have been installed in a tower
of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Mary
Our Queen in Baltimore.

But the church's luck changed in 1996, with the proposal of an unusual way to pay for a
new steeple. Bell Atlantic (now part of
Verizon) was searching for a site for a cellular phone transmission tower in Ipswich but
had been blocked from building one by
the town zoning board.

"Being a scenic coastal community, they said no way," said Bob Ebersole, the pastor of
United Methodist.

So the company made a deal with the church, agreeing to rebuild the historic steeple and
pay a monthly fee in exchange for
permission to put its antennas inside.

"We were interested in getting a steeple, and the phone company was interested in getting
business," Pastor Ebersole said. "The
town skyline now looks like it did."

Across the country, but particularly on the densely populated coasts, cellular companies
are under pressure to find creative ways
to improve call coverage despite community opposition to unsightly free-standing
transmission towers. Increasingly, they are
hiding transmission equipment inside and alongside structures like flagpoles, smokestacks,
grain silos and water towers.

Church steeples and crosses can be an ideal spot for a tower, especially in small towns
that lack other tall structures, said Jim
Fryer, an analyst in Lansdowne, Pa., who follows the cellular tower business.

"When churches were originally built, they wanted them to be the tallest structure in the
area - the closest to heaven, or so people
could hear the bells," Mr. Fryer said.

Moreover, the good will a company can gain from its association with a church might be
helpful in its dealings with a zoning
board, he said.

Of an estimated 100,000 cellular towers in the United States, Mr. Fryer said, fewer than 1
percent are found in steeples or
crosses. Churches that allow cellular antennas to be installed - often by more than one
carrier - reap an average of $1,000 to
$3,000 a month in fees, in addition to the cost of having the steeple rebuilt.

The size of the monthly payment is "based upon the negotiating skills of the pastor or
priest there, and how desirable that location
is to the carrier," said Patrick Deloney, a vice president with Engineered Endeavors, a
tower construction company that has
completed over 100 steeple projects.

In some areas, a carrier might simply want to fill a small coverage gap; in another, it
might pursue a high-elevation site to provide
coverage for many miles, according to Jim Hormann, director of implementation for AT&T
Wireless in the Northeast.

Often, a steeple must be rebuilt with materials like fiberglass or certain woods that
allow radio-frequency signals to pass through,
Mr. Hormann said. Space also must be found for transmission and switching equipment -
usually in the basement, but in the case
of one New England church, in a box behind the pulpit.

Finally, a way must be found to keep a steeple's traditional inhabitants, bats and
pigeons, away from the equipment, Mr.
Hormann said.

Dan Cline, director of operations for the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, said
that over all, sharing space with
cellular antennas had been "a good experience." His cathedral sits high on a hill on the
north side of Baltimore and houses
antenna arrays from Sprint, VoiceStream and AT&T Wireless in one of its two towers. Mr.
Cline said installers "had to pass
over one of the biggest organ installations on the East Coast," and avoid disruptions to
the cathedral's three daily Masses while
they positioned the antennas.

The project had to gain the approval of the parish council as well as 7,000 parishioners,
some of whom had concerns about
radiation, Mr. Cline said.

At the church in Ipswich, there was similar concern. It was resolved after the phone
company hired a consultant from M.I.T. "to
explain the energy-generating microwaves to us and help us to understand that we wouldn't
glow on Sunday morning," Pastor
Ebersole said.

Although work to widen the cellular carriers' networks has been slowed by the economic
downturn, Mr. Fryer, the Pennsylvania
analyst, predicted that the number of cell towers would triple to 300,000 over the next
five years with the arrival of the advanced
wireless services known as 2.5G and 3G. Those services will use higher frequencies to
transmit larger amounts of data over
shorter distances, requiring more antenna sites, he said. Transmission equipment is
expected to become smaller and less costly,
making some church steeple installations more practical.

As more information moves across the cellular network, might churches become concerned
about the kind of information passing
through their steeples?

"It's electronic signals, let's get real," said Mr. Cline in Baltimore. "It's just data."

In Ipswich, Pastor Ebersole agreed: "We don't require a statement of faith from the person
that empties our Dumpster."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/01/technology/circuits/01stee.html
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