The Cell Tower You May Never Notice

There was a time when improving cellular coverage meant building a tower, and people wanted the tower.

I witnessed that personally. In the early days of mobile telecommunications in Aruba, property owners were often quite happy to have a cell site on their property or somewhere nearby. They understood what it meant. A tower meant coverage. It meant a stronger signal. It meant progress.

How things have changed.

Mobile telecommunications went from novelty to convenience, from convenience to necessity, and eventually to something we simply expect to work everywhere. Today we want the benefit, but preferably without seeing the infrastructure required to provide it.

Fortunately, technology is changing that equation.

Increasingly, the cell tower is becoming a streetlight.

I Remember Building a Network

My perspective is not entirely theoretical.

Between 1999 and 2004, I was involved in litigation against the Government of Aruba concerning the opening of our telecommunications market. I subsequently co-founded Digicel in Aruba.

Those were genuine startup days, and my involvement extended beyond the courtroom. If we wanted to compete, we needed infrastructure.

I personally drove and walked all over Aruba looking for suitable cell sites and approaching property owners to secure locations and leases. I stood on top of hotel buildings that, looking back, were probably much too high for me to have been standing on. I walked through kunukus, climbed onto rooftops, and inspected pieces of land.

Before the first customer could make the first call, someone had to find a place to put the equipment that made that call possible.

Perhaps because I remember those days, I find today's technology particularly impressive. We are asking far more of our networks, yet engineers have found ways to make much of the additional infrastructure smaller and considerably less conspicuous.

From Towers to Streetlights

Look carefully at certain streetlights and utility poles, and you may notice something unusual: perhaps a cylindrical section at the top and communications equipment concealed within the pole or in a cabinet below.

It looks like a streetlight because it is a streetlight. But it may also be part of a cellular network.

These installations are generally known as small cells. Rather than relying exclusively on large towers, operators can place smaller network nodes closer to the people actually using the network. They can fill coverage gaps and add capacity precisely where demand exists.

This is not experimental technology. Small cells are deployed internationally, including throughout the United States. Boston, for example, recognizes cellular equipment installed on streetlights, utility poles, and traffic lights as small cells and has approved designs intended to integrate this infrastructure into the streetscape.

This is precisely the direction in which our local telcos are, and should be, moving. As demand increases and coverage gaps are identified, they should continue looking for ways to strengthen their networks using smaller, smarter, and less visually intrusive infrastructure.

I think that is clever engineering. We get more infrastructure without necessarily having to look at more infrastructure.

We Are Asking Much More of the Network

The networks we were building more than twenty years ago were being asked to do far less. Their principal promise was mobility.

Make a call. Receive a call. Send a text message.

Ironically, those may now be among the least sophisticated things we ask our phones and networks to do.

Today we stream movies and television, conduct video conferences, upload photographs and videos, synchronize documents with the cloud, operate businesses from our phones and increasingly use artificial intelligence as casually as we once used a calculator.

But we should not make the mistake of thinking that this dependence upon connectivity belongs only to younger people or those fascinated by technology.

My father, for example, may not be sitting at home experimenting with the latest artificial intelligence platform. He probably has considerably better things to do. But he enjoys watching football. La Liga, the English Premier League, and other matches that only a generation ago might have been difficult or impossible to watch from Aruba are now available to him thanks to connectivity.

That matters too.

An elderly person video-calling a child or grandchild overseas is using the same infrastructure. So is someone watching church services from home. So is a student attending an online class, a tourist navigating the island, and a business owner processing a payment.

Connectivity does not belong to one generation. It benefits virtually every age group and every part of our community.

And we don't merely want connectivity somewhere around the house. We want it in the living room, kitchen, and hallway. We want it in the walk-in closet, on the patio and beside the pool.

Let us be truthful. We even want five bars while sitting on the toilet.

That is the standard we have created for ourselves.

Modern networks therefore require both capacity and geographic coverage. Operators must strengthen weak areas and put additional infrastructure closer to the people consuming all that data.

We cannot demand twenty-first-century performance from infrastructure frozen in the architecture of twenty years ago.

We Know Where the Gaps Are

People living with a coverage gap don't need an engineer to tell them where it is. They know.

You can be driving home in the middle of an important business call, reach that familiar spot, hear the conversation begin breaking up, and find yourself turning the car around simply to finish the call.

It sounds ridiculous until you have actually done it.

There are pockets in Aruba where coverage can still be strengthened. Filling those gaps is not merely about convenience.

A dropped business call is frustrating. An unavailable connection when somebody needs an ambulance, police, or the fire department is something entirely different.

Reliable communications have become essential infrastructure.

If It Works in Boston...

Boston provides an interesting comparison.

It is hardly a city indifferent to aesthetics. It has historic neighborhoods, narrow streets and streetscapes that matter enormously. Yet Boston has accommodated small-cell infrastructure while developing approved designs intended to integrate it into its surroundings.

Across the United States, small cells have generated arguments about appearance, placement and local control. Residents have sometimes objected when equipment is installed immediately outside homes or when it is considered visually intrusive.

Those are legitimate discussions.

The lesson is not that infrastructure should be installed anywhere without consideration. The lesson is that good design and sensible placement can enable necessary infrastructure to coexist with the surrounding community.

And Then Someone Says "Radiation"

Eventually somebody will mention radiation. Sometimes against better judgment.

The word sounds frightening, which is precisely why the subject deserves science rather than slogans.

Cellular networks use radiofrequency electromagnetic energy. This is non-ionizing radiation, fundamentally different from ionizing radiation such as X-rays and gamma rays.

The meaningful question is therefore not whether an antenna emits radiofrequency energy. It does. The question is whether human exposure remains within established safety limits.

The World Health Organization has stated that no adverse health effects have been causally linked to exposure to wireless technologies at levels below applicable international guidelines.

That does not mean science should stop asking questions. If credible scientific evidence changes, standards should change with it. It means today's decisions should be based upon today's best scientific evidence.

There is also a certain contradiction here.

We worry about an antenna some distance away while voluntarily carrying a radio transmitter against our bodies for much of the day. We hold phones beside our heads. We put them in our pockets. Some people even sleep with them under their pillows.

Very few people concerned about cellular infrastructure are volunteering to surrender their mobile phones.

We want the phone, faster data, uninterrupted calls, streaming, instant uploads, and excellent reception everywhere.

All of that requires infrastructure.

Government Should Help, Not Delay

Operators have a responsibility to invest, strengthen their networks, and install infrastructure responsibly.

Government has a responsibility too.

When a local telecommunications provider identifies a genuine coverage or capacity requirement, the government should cooperate to enable the necessary infrastructure. That can mean making suitable government land available, facilitating access to public infrastructure, and processing legitimate requests without unnecessary delay.

Because when government drags its feet, it is not merely inconveniencing a telecommunications company.

The coverage gap remains.

The resident continues losing calls. The business continues experiencing unreliable connectivity. The tourist wonders why his telephone doesn't work. And somebody trying to reach emergency services remains in precisely the same weak-coverage area we already knew existed.

Cooperation does not mean blindly approving everything. Infrastructure should be properly engineered, appropriately located and compliant with applicable technical and safety requirements.

But once those requirements have been satisfied, government should facilitate rather than frustrate.

We are a small island economy dependent upon tourism, international business and connectivity. Telecommunications infrastructure should not spend unnecessary months shuttling between desks while everyone waits for someone else to stamp a piece of paper.

Infrastructure Before Innovation

For transparency, I co-founded Digicel in Aruba and am also a SETAR customer.

From Aruba's perspective, I want both networks to be excellent. We should all want that.

Better coverage from one operator should encourage better coverage from the other. Competition should produce stronger networks, better service and continued technological development. That was ultimately the purpose of opening the telecommunications market in the first place.

We speak endlessly about innovation, artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud computing, digital government and attracting technology businesses.

There is a prerequisite before all of them.

Infrastructure.

Without first-class telecommunications infrastructure, much of our discussion about digital transformation remains on PowerPoint slides and speeches.

Maybe the Future Looks Like a Streetlight

When I compare what can be installed today with the infrastructure I helped site more than twenty years ago, the difference is remarkable.

We demand vastly more from our networks, yet the infrastructure can increasingly become smaller, smarter, and less conspicuous.

Perhaps what needs updating is our mental picture of a cell tower.

Today's cell tower may not look like a tower at all. It may be the streetlight we pass every morning without giving it a second thought.

That may be exactly how good infrastructure should work: present when we need it, reliable when it matters, safe according to established scientific standards and respectful of its surroundings.

Until, of course, our telephone stops working or, worse, the Internet is down.

Then suddenly nobody cares what the streetlight looks like.

We just want five bars.

Have a wonderful week, and I will see you all next week.

And do not forget to visit my website, www.lincolngomez.com, where you can find all my blogs, podcasts, and weekly columns.