Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Navy Pitches Swaps For Cell Phone Tower Sites

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 17:39:26 -0400

Navy Pitches Swaps For Cell Phone Tower Sites

By ROBERT A. HAMILTON
Day Staff Writer
Published on 10/10/2003

Groton — The Navy wants to swap some prime telecommunications tower sites for free
mobile phones and beepers.
At an industry forum Thursday morning at the Hampton Inn, Navy officials pitched
about a dozen company representatives on the advantages that could flow from
putting antennas on water towers at the Naval Submarine Base here, or at bases in
Maine and New Jersey.

“We know your preference would probably be to write us a check and be done with
it, but that's not the best thing for the government,” said Gregory Preston, real
estate manager at the Naval Facilities Engineering Command in Lester, Pa. “What
we'd like to do instead is have some kind of services, in-kind.”

The water tower in the Trident Park housing project off Route 12 and another on
the main base are both 133 feet high, with line-of-sight service possible to large
chunks of Interstate 95.

But Josh T. Delman, in the site acquisition office at T-Mobile, said he is more
interested in the thousands of students at the Naval Submarine School on the base,
and at Connecticut College and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy right across the
river, because that age group uses a lot of cell phone time.

“We're very anxious to move forward on this,” Delman said. “And any time we can go
onto a structure that's existing, that's by far more preferred.”

Timothy Burks of Cingular said before he can make any decisions he needs firmer
information on the exaction location and elevation of the water towers so his
engineers can run it through their computer models and see where it fills in any
dead spots on their existing network.

“But we certainly are interested,” Burks said. If the Navy leases the tower sites
for cash, the money goes to the federal Treasury. If it gets free phones it can
use the money it will save for other operating requirements.

The Navy will package the Sub Base towers with a water tower at the Portsmouth
Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, and another in Topsham, Maine, near a naval air
station. David Alexander, deputy business manager for the Navy Region Northeast
office, said a last-minute addition to the list could be a water tower at the
Naval Air Engineering Center at Lakehurst, N.J.

Alexander said in addition to free telecommunications products, the Navy would be
willing to consider other services, such as maintenance and upgrades of its
information technology equipment.

Preston said the Navy anticipates awarding a company a five-year contract for the
tower sites.
The Navy will issue a formal request for proposals in early 2004, open bids in
April or May, and award a contract within two or three weeks, although he warned
the bid review could be extended by 60-90 days if the lifetime value of the lease
is worth more than $500,000, in which case it would require congressional
notification.

Alexander said eventually the lease program could be extended to other Navy
installations in the Northeast Region, including the Naval Station Newport in
Rhode Island, the Earle Weapons Center in New Jersey, and a nuclear training
station in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Under the legislation that authorizes the Navy to lease property, the contractors
will be required to bear all the costs of the lease, including any of the
improvements that are necessary, Alexander said. For instance, the water tower on
the base would need to have a transformer and a short length of underground cable
installed to provide power to the site, he said.
[email-masked]

http://www.theday.com/eng/web/newstand/re.aspx?reIDx=a1779b60-def4-4749-b944-029aa823a7dc

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