Dear Editor,
There is a wireless phenomenon taking place. For years the foot soldier in the wireless war against tower siting and site approvals was the site acquisition specialist.
These unsung heroes scoured the landscape for suitable locations for wireless carriers to place their antennas so that they could provide wireless services to a very demanding public.
These same individuals would spend many a night in front of zoning boards surrounded by hostile members of the community pleading their case for the location they chose. They suffered insult upon insult from the catcalls of the angry mob that despite poor cell service did not want a “tower in their backyard.”
Now with carrier buildouts slowing down and the emphasis on existing cell-site expansion, reconfiguration and upgrade, where have these wireless real estate experts gone? Have they become the Maytag repairmen of this half of the decade?
They have been replaced with a new type of wireless real estate person. The carriers have assigned some of their most important work to national contractors, who in turn assign the work to local contractors and in some cases it is re-assigned to other local contractors.
Wireless carriers have a lot of work to do to provide their customers with the new state-of-the-art services that their wireless devices are purported to provide.
Existing sites cannot provide advanced services like streaming video without cell-site reconfiguration.
Carriers, however, cannot simply send crews to upgrade these sites based on current leasing entitlements and zoning regulations.
Many of the leases are specific to antenna types, quantities, frequencies, etc.
This important task has left the purview of wireless experts in the leasing field and is being handled by administrative folks that have never signed a lease or attended a zoning hearing or by contractors that have taken the work from wireless carriers and have auctioned it off to the low bidder. Bids so low that the contractor can only afford having admin folks do the work.
This is your new wireless real estate “expert?”
Millions of dollars are at stake, yet the carriers entrust this important work in a very important time for wireless development to companies without wireless experience who are more concerned with their profit margin than they are with quality of work. Are the carriers really saving money or are they compromising their product by having inexperienced people doing the work who are not looking out for the carriers best interests?
It was not that long ago when cellphones were called car phones and could only be used in cars. Wireless has advanced and come along way since car phones, yet there is a decline in the quality of the personnel doing the work.
I think the carriers should hold the contractors responsible for putting the right people in front of the work. They should demand no more false org charts, or personnel that don’t know the difference between a lease or a license agreement.
Believe me when I say there are wireless real-estate professionals still out there and they can fix this.
Connor Robertson
