Subject: [NEXTEL-1] CITY ‘CELLS’ HI-TECH LAMPPOSTS FOR $25M

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 11:34:15 -0400

NY Post
July 29, 2004

CITY `CELLS' HI-TECH LAMPPOSTS FOR $25M 

By JEREMY OLSHAN 

July 29, 2004 -- City lampposts soon will light up cellphones and 
laptops as well as street corners. Six telecommunications 
companies plan to fit about 18,000 lampposts around the city with 
cellular and high-speed Internet antennas as part of a franchise 
agreement worth up to $25 million a year to the city. But all that 
radiation has some activists and officials concerned about the 
potential health implications of the antennas. "Apparently the city 
is willing to gamble with the health of its residents for $25 
million," said Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. He is introducing 
legislation to require the companies to pay for radiation inspectors 
as part of their franchise agreements. "There is no study that has 
looked at the cumulative effect of these transmitters," he said. 

Gino Menchini, the city's commissioner of information technology, 
disagrees, insisting that the city took great care to ensure the 
system would not pose a health risk. "These devices all fall well 
below the FCC exposure guidelines," he said. "In fact, the radiation 
from a microwave oven exceeds by 100 times the emissions from these 
antennas." More than half of Americans now use some kind of mobile 
phone service, according to Telecompetition Inc. In the city, the 
numbers are said to exceed 4 million cellphone subscribers. That's 
not counting the increased popularity of other wireless devices such 
as laptops and PDAs. The antennas, to be placed atop light poles 
later this year, will dramatically improve cellphone service 
throughout the five boroughs. The city has been unable to keep up 
with the transmission demand created by millions of new subscribers, 
fueled in part by people abandoning traditional phone lines in favor 
of wireless,Menchini said. The Cellular Phone Taskforce, an activist 
group based in Brooklyn, is battling against the unregulated 
widespread use of cellular transmissions. The group argues that the 
city and building owners 

willing to allow even larger antennas to be installed only care 
about money. There have also been concerns about the possible health 
risks of the cellphone itself, with some recent studies hinting that 
radiation may put callers at greater risk for cancer and 
infertility. The new antennas are also designed to increase other 
wireless services in the city. For instance, they could turn almost 
any corner of New York into a "hot spot" for wireless Internet and other
high-bandwidth data such as voice and video. "You see a little bit of 
streaming video today, but this will certainly help speed the rollout of
3G, or third generation wireless technology, in the city," he said. The
city tried this once before in 1997, but Metricom, the company 
awarded the franchise, went bankrupt shortly after installing about 
3,000 antennas. The companies include two cellular providers, Nextel and
T-Mobile, three non-cellular companies, ClearLinx Network Corp., Crown
Castle Solutions, and Dianet Communications. The sixth, IDT Business
Services, will provide telephone service via the Internet. 

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/18259.htm

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