Cell Tower News: OSHA warns tower industry; CommScope’s top of tower plug & play

Welcome to this week’s edition of cell tower industry news, brought to you by Towercrews.net.

Ever since the fatalities a few weeks back, the tower industry has been very quiet. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) used the radio silence to write an open statement to the tower industry in response to the deaths. In this statement, the need to strictly comply to safety standards was stressed, emphasizing the most important point of all: the increase in telecommunications and the towers necessary to increase capacity should NOT come at the cost of tower climber lives. The blame isn’t placed on one particular company or sector, either. OSHA addressed carriers, tower owners and “any other relevant parties in the contracting chain.” Let’s hope the tower industry takes this to heart and ensures the safety of everyone working hard to provide telecommunications.

In other news, CommScope announced the Andrew SiteRise solution. This breakthrough promises “plug-and-play” at the top of a tower. The interface is designed to simplify communication between a base station antenna and most remote radio unit (RRU) technology. The goal of this is to decrease installation and maintenance cost, which in turn should decrease the amount of time spent at the top of a tower and decrease the potential risk of harm coming to a climber on the tower.

Cell tower companies will have an easier time erecting new towers in Georgia. This season’s harsh snow storms have caused network overloading, which has led to new legislation. Passed in the House of Representatives 154 to 4, it will make the whole tower approval and installation process easier. Highlights include a cap on fees governments can charge network providers for the application review process, and cutting down the tower approval process to 150 days. The only concern legislators still have is the lack of provision concerning towers near schools. We’ll see how it goes in the senate, but this could be a huge boon for the tower industry in Georgia.

There’s plenty going on in the world of DAS in the past week. AGL reported on increased attention to base receiver station-to-DAS headend connectivity. Thanks to the development of active integration panels (AIP) more features than ever are possible, including remote monitoring and software configurable controls–all in the name of improved system management. RCR’s own Martha DeGrasse wrote an interesting article about Alcatel-Lucent and TE Connectivity coming together to decrease the cost of DAS deployments by creating a digital interface that enables Alcatel-Lucent’s base stations and TE’s FlexWave digital DAS solutions can communicate easily.