Check It Off

At the end of the day, regular site maintenance will keep your service up.

Spring-cleaning may be the routine for some, but when it comes to sites, maintenance is an ongoing task for carriers and tower companies.

“Every two weeks or so, we try to have a technician at a site to look things over,” said Mike Graham, director of network operations for Alltel (www.alltel.com). “That's a routine site inspection where we look at lights and all of the equipment within the compound.”

“Our team of network technicians has developed a plan for performing tower maintenance, which includes monitoring stats provided by our switch room plus ongoing visual inspections of the towers,” said Jana Ray, Cellular South spokesperson (www.cellularsouth.com).

“Generally (tower maintenance) is more for the long term,” said Jed Fawaz, Crown Castle vice president of network engineering and operations (www.crowncastle.com).

Some carriers relinquish tower-management responsibilities by handing their sites over to tower companies.

Carriers that outsource their towers, though, can ask for inspections of the sites at any time, said Jim Hopkins, SiteMaster vice president of marketing (www.sitemaster.com).

Whether you're conducting tower maintenance or outsourcing it, here's a checklist to consider:

1. Bring Your Weed Eater

   First things first: There are basic upkeep tasks for the area around the tower. They include mowing the lawn and picking up trash or debris.

   “Ten minutes spent pulling weeds or spraying them saves hours of labor down the road,” a Crown Castle routine-inspection checklist says.

   Technicians check the shelter's surrounding fence for any breeches. Make sure the area is secure and replace the gate's lock if necessary.

2. How's Your Azimuth?

   Antenna sweeps check current performance against their original specifications from the time of installation, according to Steve Zishka, Rural Cellular (www.rccwireless.com).

   “You take a compass, you stand it there, you make sure it's on azimuth, and you lock it down,” he said. “If it's a cell antenna, that's OK. If it's a microwave antenna, then you are going to have to do some fine-tuning.”

3. Lights Out

   The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires any structure over 200 feet to be lit.

   When it comes to lighting their towers, carriers can paint the tower for daylight visibility and use red incandescent lights at night, or leave the tower unpainted and use strobe lights at day and red lights at night. Both create challenges. For one, paint isn't cheap and tends to splatter.

   “There is no way to paint a tower without having paint drippings,” Graham said.

   Keeping up with lighting is difficult, especially in a rural areas.

   “We have to determine what the problem is and get it repaired within the 15 days allowed by the FAA,” Fawaz said. “And we have 30 minutes to notify the FAA once we become aware that the light is out.”

4. Natural Problems

   It's imperative to catch corrosion early, Fawaz said. Inspectors mainly look for corrosion and rust when they climb the towers on the more rigorous quarterly and annual visits. Water also can get into and damage the coax cables.

   A carrier usually will know from its signal whether severe weather has damaged a site. Lightning, though, can have a more subtle effect.

   Ray tabbed lightning as the No. 1 cause of tower repairs.

   “You never know how extensive the problem will be until you're on-site and assess the situation,” she said.

   Also, be careful where you put your tower; some soils are acidic and can even eat through guy-wire points.

5. Power Check

   Batteries and backup generators are checked, for the most part, on a quarterly basis. Battery plants last about 10 years, and many are reaching the end of their life cycles.

   Carriers and tower-asset companies better hope there aren't many of those sites in California. Without power, there's no need for tower maintenance. Without towers, there's no wireless service.