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PlanWireless |
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Dead Zones, Gaps & Black Holes: What the Wireless Industry Didn't Tell Us The Sunday, April 1, 2001 edition of the San
Francisco Chronicle had a lead story entitled, "Dead Zones: Where Cell
Phones Don't Work." The article was particularly interesting to readers of PlanWireless,
because of what consumers were complaining about … and they weren't upset
about towers (most cell sites in California are lower than 50 feet).
People were complaining that they bought a subscription to a cell service
with areas shown to be "covered" by a wireless company's map but now they
are experiencing dropped calls, interference and inability to connect after
several tries. These consumers thought that "coverage" means
that calls always work in the coverage area.
Instead, they're finding that the more dense an area is with cell sites
(like every ½-mile), the more problems seem to occur. If they had been reading PlanWireless,
they would have known by now that "service" is not the same as
"coverage" and, in areas of high "call density," the occurrence of
"dead zones," "gaps" and "black holes" becomes common and annoying.
Some consumers are asking for their money back. And what do the wireless companies say?
Oh, they'll claim that it's the terrain and all the other types of
urban clutter. Consumers
shouldn't accept excuses of trees, tall buildings and hills as the reason for
dead zones. Clutter can contribute
to the problem, to be sure, but the real villain is demand.
The more people with cell phones in a particular area there are, the
greater likelihood that calls will be interrupted, interfered with, or never
connected. The only solution is a
new cell site between the two existing cell sites, a process known as "cell
splitting." The wireless industry
may say they can solve these problems with upgrades at the cell site, such as
more antennas, higher capacity equipment in the cabinets or shelters, etc. However, these are band-aids at best. Instead of the 100,000 antenna/base stations that the
Personal Communications Industry Association (PCIA) predicted in 1995 that would
exist in the U.S. by the year 2005, the number is more likely to be one million
by the year 2010. (PlanWireless
estimates that 140,000 cell sites have already been permitted … don't ask
how many there are that have been "bootlegged.") Here's the problem: the real culprit in wireless
deployment is not call density. That
may be the problem today, but by the year 2005, the problem will be data.
Handsets will no longer be "cell phones," but rather interactive
(real-time or minor delay) personal computers.
The capacity requirements for wireless data transmission and reception
completely dwarf voice requirements, and capacity requirements mean more cell
sites. Further, those cell sites
are going to have to come down in height, or their signals will start
overlapping and will start interfering with each other.
That is why Kreines & Kreines, Inc. tells its clients: start putting
cell sites on local government-owned streetlights now, while the carriers are
still using "towers." Once the
carriers start attaching cell sites to telephone poles without getting permits
from local government, as is being done in Southern California, the local
government will have a code enforcement problem rather than a revenue-generating
opportunity.
Meanwhile, consumer advocates in California are busy:
they claim that wireless companies are misleading consumers with "coverage
maps" that show where a handset should work when, in fact, it may not work.
As PlanWireless has said before, "coverage" merely means that the
signal is there, it doesn't mean that a consumer will get the signal or keep
it long enough to make a call. In California, some cell phone users are pressuring the California Public Utilities Commission. The CPUC is drafting a telecommunications "bill of rights" to protect cell phone users. Local governments should beware that, when a state public utilities commission gets involved in wireless, that could be the beginning of a state takeover of planning for wireless facilities. Then again, maybe that is what some local governments want; but we at PlanWireless don't think so. |
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