11-26-1997 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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by Roy Moore With communities resisting new tower construction, wireless carriers search for alternative ways to deploy their antennas. A new mount offers one solution. he decision was unanimous. The seven zoning hoard (numbers of • the northern New Jersey village all voted against the eon.auruc- tior of a cellular phone transmission tower. The board's vote, mode in Wyckoff, about 15 miles west of New York City, followed 22 months of heated dispute. Though the dispute and decision were recently reported in The Well Street Journal, the story is, unfortu- nately, not all that unusual. Many communities throughout the counhy resist new tower construction, though often a large number of their residents seek the wireless services for which the towers are needed. For the wireless industry, this sit- uation poses a towering challenge. It is a challenge that led officials with FWT Inc., Fort Worth, TX, to sit down in December 1995 with representa- 6 'd 69i0i69Zi91 tives of Texas Utilities Electric, a utilities firm headquartered in Las Colinas, near Dallas, and Dallas -based PrimeCo, a PCS carrier. Collectively, they readily determined a solution to the wireless tower dilemma: modify utility electrical transmis- sion towers (ETTs) so they could support sectored antenna arrays, Executing the solution was not quite so easy, however. Questions of load and the problem of interference from electrical power lines presented sig- nificant logistical challenges. Brainstorming for a solution began in August 1995, and throe short months later, a product was intro- duced to the wireless and utility industries. The result is the PowerMount, a device that joins the ETT and monopole structures to provide enough capacity in compression (loads pushing down) and deflec- tion (movement back and forth) to support communications anten- nas. With Power. Mounts, antennas can be supported at the structure's top or at intermediate levels, providing they do not inter- fere with the struc- ture or conductors. The intent of the PowerMount was to achieve the following: a Reduce zon- ing and siting problems such as the one in Wyckoff, by modifying an existing tower, thus negating the need for a new tower; • Allow carri- ers to secure sev- eral sites at once by working with utility companies, which invariably have multiple sites available; and • Quickly fill "dead spots" in FWT. Texas Utilities Electric and PrimeCo team to modity utility electrical towers to support wireless antennas. coverage and thus generate revenue rapidly. So fan more than 450 units have been installed, They serve about a dozen carriers and are mounted on towers owned by some 15 to 20 utility companies. Using a precast foundation, the PowerMount can bo installed in two to three days, usually at a cost of $25,000 to $30,000 for an 85 -foot unit to 110 -foot unit. Stress analysis is performed on the tower to detennine FW7's PowerMount connects the antenna array directly to the monopole. Page 98 c6d0 'dd •MI SSQf lid 6Z : I IL L6 -96