Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Company Designs Camouflage for Cell Phone Towers, Base Stations

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 04:26:20 -0500

Company Designs Camouflage for Cell Phone Towers, Base Stations

The Larson Company, which designs amusement part attractions, is also
getting work to disguise cell phone towers and base stations. The towers can
appear as palm, fig or pine trees, or even as grain silos. The base stations can
be hidden as rock formations. The company has built such antenna sites for
companies including Verizon, Cingular, Sprint, AT&T Wireless and Nextel, as
the wireless carriers strive to overcome communities' objections to having the
sites in their neighborhoods. The disguised sites can cost twice as much as an
unadorned site, but carriers are paying the additional costs in order to improve
their coverage areas.

Dressing Up Cell Towers
Clever Camouflage Hides Common Community Communication Eyesore

By Jim Goldman, Tech Live Silicon Valley Bureau chief

March 3

— Think of the Larson Company as a kind of Johnny Appleseed for the wireless age.
Just as the classic American literary figure traveled the countryside planting apple
trees, Larson travels the
nation to plant trees of a different sort.

The company is known for creating realistic amusement park attractions such as the
artificial reefs inside the world-famous Monterey Bay
Aquarium. But it's taking that expertise to solve a practical issue: hiding unsightly
microwave antennas used by cell-phone service
providers.

"We specialize in concealing wireless antenna bay stations," says a proud Steve Meyer, the
company's vice president for business
development. And Larsen hides the big, gray, boxy wireless antennas inside in all kinds of
places: from ersatz rock formations to even a
90-foot grain silo near a shopping mall outside Chicago.

But by far, the easiest way to hide towers of antennas is to camouflage them as foliage.

The various trees, including palms, figs, and pines, are created leaf by leaf, needle by
needle, inside a computer. Designers use AutoCAD
software to wire-frame every part of the tree, taking into account where the antenna's
panels are, where the branches will go, and making
sure leaves and branches don't interfere with cell-phone signal transmission.

The designs are then turned into giant molds that ultimately shape the artificial trees,
which can cost up to $100,000. Chimneys, boulders,
and other decorative antennas run as little as $12,000.

The entire process of building the trees takes about eight to 10 weeks. So far, Larson has
built and installed nearly 300 "adorned" cell
towers nationwide. The company has worked with Cingular, Sprint, Nextel, AT&T, Verizon,
and Voicestream (now T-Mobile).

'NIMBY' Killers

Depending on the kind of setup needed, Larsen's stealth towers could cost about twice as
much as normal, uncamouflaged towers. But
wireless service carriers don't seem reluctant to pay the added costs — especially if it
means the difference of having a coverage in a
neighborhood and generating revenue or not.

"One of the major ways that a town can deny an antenna permit application is because of
aesthetic appeal or property values," says Libby
Kelley, executive director of the Council on Wireless Technology Impacts, a nonprofit
organization dedicated to the safe use of
electromagnetic radiation.

And addressing such "NIMBY" — as in, "not in my backyard" — concerns is where the company
can really shine, says Meyers.

"If they see a tree out of the corner of their eye, they're not gonna take a second pass
at it," Meyer says.

Scott Ellison, program director of wireless communications for IDC, a high tech
consultancy, agrees that community opposition plays a key
role in Larson's business plan. "A cell-phone tower is typically not a very attractive
thing in and of itself," he says. "You often run into
community opposition when you try and place a new cell-phone tower in a community."

Despite this opposition, there are more than 100,000 commercial cell towers in the United
States. And several thousand more are being
added every year, according to research group IDC.

But Meyers believes that if his company's doing its job, all you may see would be a new
forest of "trees."

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/TechTV/techtv_antennacamouflag030303.html
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