Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 13:52:57 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

As far as cell phone towers, a lot of the cost is in legal fees and
local governments charging out the ass for permits. So it becomes greed,
over safety.

Not so much legal fees. The local cellular operators tend to hire
real estate brokers and such to deal with the local governments.
They're less expensive than lawyers and are more knowledgeable about
local alternative sites, site rental fees, and property costs.
Intentional delays that bordered on extortion became such a problem
that the FCC was forced to require a time limit for acting on proposed
sites new site and modifications.
http://www.commlawblog.com/2012/01/articles/cellular/fcc-shot-clock-presumptions-for-wireless-tower-permitting-upheld/
https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-09-99A1.pdf

It's not just municipal governments that slow things down. Local
citizens groups that fear the proliferation of RF belching towers also
create delays. For example, this is our local citizens groups:
https://www.facebook.com/StopBoulderCreekCellTower/
The Boulder Creek site was never built, but no because of the efforts
of this group. It was due to the county demanding specific basic
documents from the Verizon representative, which were not produced.

I has several discussions with the Verizon people about this site and
others that were planned locally, which taught me a few things. For
example, at the time, Verizon had about 1500 new sites in various
stages of planning in Northern California. Most of these sites are
not for new coverage, but are to increase bandwidth and capacity in
areas that already have service. New sites require some minimum
prospective user density to be considered worthwhile, which is a
problem for areas with transient usage. For example, a rather large
lake in the area has nearly zero cellular coverage, despite a large
influx of cell phone users during the summer. Because the area is
essentially empty during the remaining 9 months of the year, it's
probably not going to be profitable investment.

Verizon also takes the path of least resistance. If there's any
impediments caused by government or citizen groups and can't seem to
be resolved, Verizon just moves on to another more hospitable area.
The previously mentioned lake owners/operators offered to pay Verizon
for installing a site to compensate for the limited revenue. I don't
know if that worked.

Another expensive problem is camouflaged towers, which roughly doubles
the cost of the tower. Yet another is the time involved in crafting
local tower ordinances, no two of which are identical. I was involved
in the passage of the Santa Cruz CA county tower ordinance, which in
my never humble opinion was a giant mess. You really don't want to
know what is involved in making sausage and tower ordinances.
Incidentally, we were saved by the local coastal commission. They
took our best efforts, cleaned it up dramatically, and actually
produced a readable and workable ordinance. Other cities and counties
often use the time needed to create such ordinance as a way of
delaying the introduction of new towers.

If you want to slosh through the politics, reading back issues of AGL
(Above Ground Level) magazine should be instructive:
http://www.aglmediagroup.com


I worked in CATV, Broadcast and Two way radios. The City of
Middletown Ohio's first tower ordinance banned ALL towers, and outdoor
antennas. No exemption for the local AM radio station, CATV headend, or
even the police and fire departments. Their faulty reasoning was if no
one had an antenna, everyone would have to pay for cable, and they would
make more money off the franchise fees which were based on the number of
customers.

In the early '80s St. Louis, MO sent our CATV manager an order to
take down their tower and Sat dishes, for the same fool idea. St Lois
was a real mess. They split the city into seven areas, and gave seven
different companies a franchise. They also wanted to make cable
customers pay a large fee to pay for the entire costs to operate the
landfill, and all garbage collection, since watching TV was a 'luxury'.



--
Never **** off an Engineer!

They don't get mad.

They don't get even.

They go for over unity! ;-)