Carriers and tower companies may not be building as many towers as they have in the past, but there’s no slowdown for the National Association of Tower Erectors. For the fourth year in a row, NATE reported record attendance and a record number of exhibitors at its annual trade show, NATE Unite.
Many tower crews are busy with site upgrades, maintenance and carrier adds, and are looking forward to the repacking of broadcast spectrum. In addition, some say new wireless tower construction is starting to pick up. The First Responder Network Authority expected contract announcement is driving some of the activity.
“Site acquisition is the leading indicator,” said Verticom CEO Jeff Lewis. Verticom manages tower construction and maintenance jobs, as well as small cell and fiber installations in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Lewis said Verticom is seeing activity from all four nationwide carriers.
Software streamlines projects
The NATE exhibit hall was dominated by equipment, with just a few software suppliers in the mix. But software punches above its weight when it comes to saving customers money, according to the software executives whose booths were among the busiest.
John Patton, CEO of OneVizion, said Sprint has cut its costs by tens of millions of dollars by using his company’s database software to catalog and synchronize information about cell sites and jobs. OneVizion expects its solution to be increasingly helpful to operators as they add more antennas to cell sites to support multiple-input/multiple-output data streams.
Enertech has created an online rigging plan generator for the tower industry. The goal of RiggingCalc is to produce American National Standards Institute/American Society of Safety Engineers A10.48 compliant rigging plans faster and with greater accuracy by expediting rigging forces calculations and equipment verification.
The Avetta booth was one of the most popular at the show. The company uses its database of tens of thousands of integrators and construction firms to help clients manage risk. Avetta said it vets integrators to make sure they carry the necessary insurance and comply with regional regulations.
Rise of the drones
A number of drone service providers were on the show floor at NATE Unite this year. For as little as $100, tower owners can get an aerial inspection of their asset. Pricier packages include more images and more detailed tower inspection reports. Some of the service providers can integrate the tower images into 3D modeling software and provide 3D images to their clients.
Several drone companies are focused primarily on wireless infrastructure and find themselves competing with drone service providers who serve other industries. Companies that have been focused on government services, real estate, energy services and rooftop inspection are now targeting the cell tower industry.
Broadcast repack
The broadcast repack is the industry term for the upcoming relocation of TV broadcasters into new spectrum bands. Several TV stations are in the process of selling airwave rights to wireless carriers through the federal government’s 600 MHz spectrum auction. In order to stay on the air after the auction ends, many of these stations will need to move to UHF bands, which will require the installation of new antennas on their towers.
Broadcast antennas are larger than cellular antennas and broadcast towers are taller than cell towers. Therefore climbing broadcast towers to install new antennas can be dangerous for crews that do not have the right training. This week, NATE released a new video to give climbers an overview of the challenges and excitement of scaling broadcast towers.
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