“You Can’t Have One Without The Other” is the new buzz phrase in the wireless industry today.

Last month, my neighbor proudly and happily announced that he had cut the cords on his landline telephone and had turned wireless. With the advent of 3G and beyond, there is an increasing trend among people to switch to wireless facilities. In 2007, CTIA, the Wireless Association estimated that about 14% of the US population had completely gone wireless. In 2010, CTIA estimates that nearly 50% of Californians have only mobile phones and no landline telephones. Despite the popularity of going wireless, there still remains a significant disconnect between the rate at which new customers are added to wireless networks and the rate at which the wireless networks are upgraded to accommodate these new users. Disgruntled customers often have to complain about dropped calls and poor call qualities, especially in high density urban areas. Furthermore, completely relying on cell phones poses a tremendously high public safety risk during emergency situations. According to CTIA, 150,000 9-1-1 calls originate from mobile phones each day. Ubiquitous connectivity has become vital parts of our lives today. What can be scary is that poor call qualities and dropped calls can also happen during a 9-1-1 call.

Wireless companies know that the only way to solve this problem is to upgrade their networks and add capacity– i.e. build new towers or alternate cell sites to increase capacity in their networks. In a previous post titled “The Wireless PIT”, I briefly touched upon some of the issues that arise when new tower applications are submitted by the wireless providers. Municipal corporations and regulatory bodies, driven by the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) mindset displayed by local residents, have a very tough time in granting approvals to these new tower applications. Towers affect property values in neighborhoods and are aesthetically obtrusive to the surroundings. This leads residents to vehemently oppose any tower application that comes to their back yard, hence the “Not In My Back Yard” phenomenon starts. Local residents lack the understanding that this ugly tower could potentially save their life by ensuring that their 9-1-1 call does not get dropped. On the bright side, their dislike of towers has in fact forced wireless companies to innovate aesthetically unobtrusive, yet expensive alternatives to towers in order to provide wireless connectivity, but the NIMBY problem still persists in many areas where towers are the only way out.

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