Green Mountain Sites

Vermont is the nation's toughest state to site in, but Rural Cellular's Atlantic Division is right at home.

After 11 years in Vermont, Tom McLaughlin, Rural Cellular Corporation (RCC) vice president, Atlantic region (www.cellularone-phones.com), has developed an adage: It's easier to teach a Vermonter the wireless business than it is to teach a wireless professional to be a Vermonter.

Indeed, the Green Mountain State has not been a compelling market for major wireless carriers; of the nation's top five carriers, only Verizon Wireless (www.verizonwireless.com) operates in the state. Vermont's infamous barriers include its undulating topography, its citizens' aversion to towers and Act 250, the state legislation regulating land use and development.

“Vermont is without a doubt the toughest state in the country (to site in),” said Richard Ekstrand, RCC CEO. “We would have a different financial situation if all of the states were as tough as Vermont.”

That hasn't stopped RCC, branded as Cellular One, from becoming Vermont's leading carrier. With its headquarters just outside Burlington, VT, the Atlantic region of RCC delivers service to all of Vermont, western New Hampshire, northeastern New York and a section of western Massachusetts. Whether in a church steeple or on a ski jump, RCC has put sites where no sites have gone before.

Act 250

Once you've seen the Green Mountains covered in snow or the fall foliage, you can't blame Vermonters for their strong desire to maintain the state's environmental health. The positives of wireless service aside, the idea of planting a tower on the horizon isn't going to get much support. Atlantic region customers' primary demand is increased coverage; yet, that doesn't mean they want towers. Because of Act 250 and the state's modest population, individuals hold more power in the tower debate than perhaps in any other state.

Beth Kohler, RCC legal services director, said Vermont has a broad definition of who can participate in the tower-decision process.

“Pretty much anybody who doesn't like towers has a say, and Vermont is small enough that one voice can be very influential in the process,” she said.

For all of its influence on wireless infrastructure, Act 250 originally was meant to curb the construction of vacation homes, a trend in the late 1960s. So many homes were built that the soil could not handle the construction; the damage was such that sewage ran onto the highways.

Passed in 1970, Act 250 outlines 10 detailed criteria for evaluating proposed development, including any structure that would rise 20 feet or more. Most of the criteria mirrors federal environmental regulations. Two of the 10 criteria are particularly challenging for carriers to meet, including, first, the site must “not have an undue effect on the scenic or natural beauty of the area, aesthetics, historic sites or rare and irreplaceable natural areas.” Second, the site has to comply with regional and municipal development plans.

Even with Act 250's extensive requirements, RCC has developed its network successfully; the carrier has 57 sites in the state and never has been denied an Act 250 application. Key to that success has been the carrier's willingness to work with Act 250, not fight the legislation. That means having lawyers work with engineering and network-operations staffs from the beginning, not just when something goes wrong, Kohler said. Early cooperation of all teams allows the carrier to rule out problematic site prospects.

Kohler often finds herself trying to establish the critical balance between the carrier's engineering needs and the realities of site acquisition.

“Our engineering group is driven by getting the best site from their perspective,” she said. “Our net ops group has to be able to build a site they can afford. Those perspectives can often clash with what I think we may or may not be able to do under Act 250. Making those hard decisions early does save you money in one respect because you are not litigating a bad decision.”

Before deciding to pursue a site, Kohler makes sure that all alternatives are examined. There cannot be another location with less of an environmental impact. Alternatives that are expensive or compromise the carrier's RF needs usually are weighed against their odds of success.

“I tend to look at its reasonableness: Who is involved, what municipality, do they have any other sites there, what's their demographic, do they have coverage at all, would it be controversial, could we get enough support to win,” Kohler said.

Ironically, it's co-location sites that create the toughest challenges under Act 250.

“There is a tower that somebody put up a long time ago, and we want to co-locate on it, but the neighbors view this as an opportunity to get rid of the structure,” Kohler said.

Although it's not specifically in the law, Kohler said Act 250 opens up the entire structure for review. This creates an impossible situation for the carrier because “you can say ‘til you are blue in the face that all you're doing is putting antennas on it; it doesn't materially change its impact,” she said.

A recent case involved a water tank already covered with antennas. A man who is adamantly opposed to technology mustered support from locals and neighboring communities. RCC lost the application before the zoning board.

“This was a water tank,” Kohler said. “It already had antennas on it. This was where the municipality wanted us to go. Off site you couldn't see our antennas. Everything was right, and still we hit this obstacle. That always builds up momentum, when you have groups that oppose the structures.”

Similar legislation is also on the books in New Hampshire. Enacted to help communities plan for the development of wireless sites in a way that minimizes their intrusiveness, the law requires that municipalities near a proposed site be contacted and given a chance to voice any concerns. The bill is not meant to hinder the development of wireless networks; rather, it seeks to maintain New Hampshire's landscape. The bill also calls for a telecommunications facility map to help promote the orderly construction of new sites.

Kohler handled the Atlantic region's site challenges so well that her responsibilities expanded to all of RCC's regions, but the Atlantic region has the most rigorous challenges, she said.

Build to Suit

Take a look at RCC's track record, and it's obvious the carrier is willing to compromise with the community to get a site. RCC has put a site in a church steeple, on an Olympic ski jump, on barns, silos and water tanks. Mountaintop towers generally are accessible only via ATVs, ski lifts or snowmobiles. Although stealth and remote sites bring additional costs and challenges, they help build rapport with regulators.

The topographic variety of the Atlantic region adds another hurdle to network development.

“We've got large terrain variations,” said Tom Buckley, RCC network operations director. “We've got the Green Mountains, the White Mountains (in New Hampshire), the Adirondack Mountains (in New York). Between each mountain range, we go right down to sea level in the valley floors like the Lake Champlain valley, where it's rolling fields of dairy farms, then up to the mountain-tops. So you are up and down fairly quickly,” he said.

The height of the mountain ranges is both a blessing and a nuisance, said Will Simonelli, RCC RF engineer. A site on Mount Mansfield, the highest peak in Vermont at 4,393 feet, offers a particular challenge. Its antennas look west to cover New York and are pointed down to try to prevent the radiating pattern from hitting the Burlington area.

“You've got to manage that properly and make sure that we don't get RF that we don't want 30 to 40 miles away in a major populated area,” Simonelli said. “In a situation like that, elevation is not necessarily a good thing.”

On the other hand, with more rural sites, the mountains allow for a wide circle of coverage from the antennas' omni configurations.

Now that RCC has a mature network, stealth sites are well-suited to fill in coverage holes, Buckley said. Simonelli acknowledged that such sites are generally microcells that fill small holes in coverage. The signal pays a small price, though, with stealth sites. Something, however, is much better than nothing.

“For the most part, we do make a sacrifice coverage-wise when we put those up, but we are able to get adequate coverage out of them, and we are able to get them built more quickly,” Simonelli said.

Time to acquire can be critical in many cases, and RCC's adaptability has helped the carrier get a site while its competitor was tied up in the zoning process. Verizon Wireless was in pursuit of a site on Georgia Mountain in Vermont. RCC has co-location rights with Verizon for this site. When it was clear that Verizon would be bogged down in the zoning process for quite some time, RCC had to find an alternative.

“We had needs to react to immediately, so we solicited a number of farmers there in the area, and we found a veterinarian who has a barn on his property,” Buckley said. “In the time that Verizon has continued to pursue this site, we've got a site up and on the air for over a year. Was it a compromise? Sure, but we still have the opportunity (to locate) should a structure ever wind up being constructed. At the same time, the volume of traffic has increased such that it would not make this smaller site go away.”

Buckley said that site acquisition for larger carriers is primarily driven from an engineering perspective. Although RCC won't forget its RF needs, the carrier has demonstrated flexibility to get a site in a challenging situation.

Local Focus

When communicating with those he calls CATs (citizens against towers), Tom Joyce, RCC real-estate coordinator, gets local support. The best way to reduce tower fears is to talk with those who aren't anti-towers and give them the resources to share with their concerned neighbors. CATs aren't likely to believe the information coming from a carrier, but they might be more receptive to information coming from their friends and neighbors.

Joyce also pointed out that while Vermont is home base for RCC, other carriers may see the Green Mountain State only as a supplement to their main regions, especially during winter when hordes of skiers travel to the state.

A cornerstone to RCC's relationship with the community is its territory-manager program. The idea is to push decision making as close to the customer as possible. The carrier's licensed areas are divided into territories, typically measured by population. Each manager is responsible for the territory's distribution and works to integrate Cellular One into the community by supporting local events and through community giving programs.

When it comes to siting, other carriers have come to Vermont and ignored RCC's model of success.

Kohler has tried to share her strategies with larger carriers.

“When Nextel first tried to come in, I sat with them and I said there is a way to do this, and if you fight it, you are not going to succeed,” she said. “(Execution) is hard because the people who are driving those decisions weren't here and close enough to the challenges.”

The fact that there's a local face representing Cellular One certainly has helped.

“Even though I am a lawyer, when I show up Tuesday night at 7:30 before the zoning board, (they know) I live in Jericho, the town next door,” Kohler said. “We are local, and it makes a big difference.”

Kohler hopes that major carriers will stop ignoring Vermont.

“Vermont should have better coverage than it does,” she said. “We should have better coverage given the investments we have made and are willing to make in this state, and there should be more competition. When you read the FCC's reports on competition, Vermont stands alone as the only state where there is no more than two wireless providers in a given market.”

The Atlantic region got its start in Vermont and after 11 years, “Cellular One is a part of the Vermont family,” Joyce said. That relationship has made all the difference against competitors Cingular (in New York), U.S. Cellular (in New Hampshire and southern Vermont), and Verizon Wireless (in northern Vermont). Although those carriers “have more resources than a lot of third-world nations,” McLaughlin said, RCC has a critical advantage.

“What are we doing that they are not doing? It's focus,” he said. “We listen; we pay attention. We have been straightforward and honest. We have a good story, and it happens to be the truth, and that is that we live here; we respect the environment here.”

Dashing Through the Snow

It's a week after the third worst

Nor'easter in recorded history hit upper New England, and the weather has let up, for now. Time to break trail.

“Here the weather changes on you instantly,” said Dave Nault, RCC field operations manager. “That's what they say about New England: If you don't like the weather, wait a day; it will change.” Of course, there's no guarantee that it will change for the better.

Today's site is on Russ Hill, a 1,443-foot hill near South Royalton, VT. It's been one month and two storms since any technicians have been to the site, so Nault and Richard Craig, RCC field technician, are expecting to find a good amount of accumulation. The two park their heavy-duty trucks near the access road and unload their snowmobiles. Each of Nault's eight technicians is outfitted with a 4-wheel-drive truck, an ATV, a snowmobile, snowshoes and survival gear. Knowing how to ski is requisite, but isn't hard to come by with Vermonters. Their saying is: If you walk, you ski.

Breaking trail is a critical job in the winter months.

“You've always got to make sure that you get to those hub sites,” Nault said. “If we have an outage and a tech needs to go there at the spur of the moment, you don't want them to have to deal with five hours of breaking trail. We go to all those major hubs right after a snow storm and cut through the snow.”

Nault doesn't flinch at the four feet of snow at the site's gate and ramps his snowmobile onto the trail. The trail to the site winds through a farmer's land; he has one bull, which is notorious back at the RCC office. Off the trail, the snow is nearly waist deep. The trail curves its way through numerous trees, and it's easy going at first. The trail's second incline, though, requires nearly 10 attempts before Nault and Craig surmount it. All told, the process takes about an hour; a relatively easy trail break, the two said.

Craig remembers his worst trail break at Tupper Mountain in New York — eight hours through four feet of snow. Coming down a mountain, Nault even ran his truck into a tree his first day on the job. Once, another technician came out of the shelter to discover that a moose had ventured into the enclosure. He let the moose do its thing until it left while he waited patiently in the shelter. Several more recent storms prompted a midnight trip to Mount Mansfield, where the technicians discovered that the shelter had been completely covered with snow. The good news was that they were able to walk on the snow over the enclosure's 8-foot fence; the bad news was they had to dig down into the shelter, and, unfortunately, the shelter had flooded because the intake took in so much snow, which then melted.

“If you know there's nothing wrong with the site, and you're just breaking trail, the pressure is not there, and it's just ‘let's get to the site and while we're doing it, we'll have fun,’” Nault said. “It isn't fun when it's 20 below out, and it's two in the morning, and you've already done a 12-hour shift, and you have to get there.”

The outdoor activities don't appeal to everyone, though, making it a challenge to find the right people.

“Besides knowing cellular, you also need to be the type of person that wants to go out and do these kinds of things,” Nault said. “Most turn it down just because they are not interested in dealing with 20-below weather and snowmobiling. It's certainly easier to drive to a site at two in the morning than it is to unload a snowmobile, get it up the hill, bring your test equipment and then load it back up.”

Nault says it all comes down to being ready for anything in the carrier's network. After 11 years of working with Act 250, dealing with the region's roller-coaster topography and building unique and remote sites, the RCC Atlantic region has proven it's ready and willing to do whatever it takes to make wireless service at home in Vermont.