“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.
With the goal of ameliorating the NIMBY problem, the California Wireless Association (CalWA) has embarked on a campaign to educate communities, local governments and municipal zoning corporations on why and how wireless connectivity cannot exist without wireless infrastructure. The wireless infrastructure forms the backbone that connects every individual to the rest of the world. Without the infrastructure, this connection cannot exist. At the CTIA’s wireless trade show in Las Vegas on March 23, 2010, the CalWA premiered a 5 minute educational film titled “You Can’t Have One Without The Other”. The intended audiences for this film are the public and the regulatory authorities who must approve tower applications in their local communities. Emergency response workers like firefighters have participated in the film to highlight how people have come to increasingly rely on wireless networks to make 9-1-1 calls and also how emergency response workers also use wireless for on-site communications with their colleagues and these reasons should be sufficient for a move towards making wireless networks more robust. The CalWA aims to show this film, at all public hearings for tower applications in California. While a teaser 30 second preview of this film is available on YouTube [CLICK HERE] the full length film can be viewed at [CLICK HERE]
In addition to the advocacies from PCIA, CTIA and other industry associations, that have assisted several local communities across the US make optimal decisions concerning their wireless needs, additional advocacy and support from public interest groups like the CalWA will certainly go a long way in ensuring that local communities slowly move away from a “NIMBY” mindset into a “You Can’t Have One Without The Other” frame of mind.
Tags: connectivity, infrastructure, NIMBY, wireless PIT