Welcome to this week’s edition of cell tower industry news, created by Jarad Matula and brought to you by Towercrews.net.
OSHA directive on hoisting
In a new step towards safer practices on tower work sites, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration has issued a new directive that outlines stricter rules for inspectors to judge safety and compliance when it comes to using a personal hoist. The hoist is used to take employees to or from workstations and communication towers, as well as sending materials up and down on the site. This new directive requires a hoist to be used by personnel during all phases of tower work. Previously, a similar directive issued in 2002 only applied to hoisting climbers and technicians during the erection of a new tower.
This just barely scrapes the surface though. Click here to read the directive in full so you can fully understand what all it entails. But how do people working on the tower feel about this update? For insight into how climbers feel about this directive, check out tower blogger Wade’s thoughts on this update.
“This directive ensures that communication tower workers are protected regardless of the type of the work they are doing on communication towers,” said OSHA Assistant Secretary David Michaels.
Tightening up of climber regulations should comes as a surprise to one, considering there have already been nine communication tower-related fatalities in 2014, and the year still has five months to go.
Battler over use of tower data continues in Calif., N.Y.
Earlier this summer we reported that a Federal Appeals Court upheld a ruling that police must get a warrant to obtain cell tower data, or else it was a privacy violation. The fight for privacy rages on in Northern California, where American Civil Liberties Union attorneys and magistrates are fighting against federal prosecutors who want to continue getting cell tower data without a warrant.
These prosecutors argue that since users sign a privacy policy with their carrier, allowing the carrier to use cell tower data, then it must be more or less public, saying that cell site records are not personal papers. However, the ACLU argues that this signed privacy policy doesn’t wave away reasonable right to privacy when it comes to your whereabouts. This is true. After all, sadly, who actually reads all the fine print in those privacy policies?
In New York, privacy advocates are up in arms over use of cell tower data use by the New York Police Department. Someone replaced the American flags atop the Brooklyn Bridge with plain white “surrender”-type flags. Police want to do a tower dump to examine all calls made near the bridge around the time of the vandalism. The sort of technique has only been used on violent crimes in the past, and many are upset that they want to violate the Fourth Amendment (some feel so anyway) just for a vandalism case.
Cell tower news quickies
- West Africa uses cell towers to monitor rainfall.
- CommScope reports strong Q2 2014 results.
- Dehydration root cause of falling climbers?
Regional/local tower news
- Grandville, Mich., city code requires cell phone tower to be disguised as tree.
- Johnstown, Ohio, might have little recourse to stop cell tower.
- Killingly, Conn., cell tower will bring in an extra $30,000.
- AT&T withdraws bid for cell tower in Wrentham, Mass., Wampum Corner area.
- Commissioners eye cell tower to pay for equipment in Shelter Island, N.Y.
- City of Daleville, Ala., approves new cell tower construction.
- Hanover, N.H., to hear cell tower appeal.
- PSB OKs Shag Bark Hill cell tower in Putney, Vt.
- La Jolla, Calif., committee approves cell tower fix.
