Hiding in Plain Site

When AT&T Wireless decided it needed an antenna in the Boston suburb of Harvard, MA, its idea was met with resistance.

Located in a rural area but bisected by two major highways, Harvard was a prime location for wireless carriers. However, neighborhood residents were less than pleased with the idea of a 150-foot tower in their backyard. Homeowners were concerned about the look of the site, said Marty Nee, AT&T Wireless (www.attws.com) director of corporate communications for the northeast region.

“A traditional pole wasn't going to appease them,” Nee said.

AT&T had been working with Harvard authorities for years before they came to an agreement to shrink and disguise the proposed site. Now, a stealth pine-tree antenna adorns a wooded area near the busy interstate, a compromise between what AT&T initially proposed and what neighborhood residents wanted to avoid.

“In a lot of cases, a tree isn't appropriate,” Nee said. “But, in this case, we felt it was.”

Nee said the site was an example of disguised technology at its best. And, because stealth sites have become more realistic, more cities are beginning to request them. They are becoming increasingly popular as the quality gets better, Nee said.

Fake Plastic Trees

One of the problems both carriers and communities have had with disguised sites, especially trees, is how unnatural they looked. Sure, companies could build a monopole, paint it brown, add plastic branches and call it a tree, but sometimes instead of camouflaging the antenna, that treatment would make it stand out more.

A monopole painted blue-gray is not likely to catch the eyes of people driving by, said Antonio Gualtieri, Tectonic Engineering telecommunications manager & senior structural engineer (www.tectonicengineering.com).

“But the trees can be ugly,” he said.

Larry D. Hibler, Larson utility camouflage division director, agreed (www.utilitycamo.com).

“In the early days of tree sites, with the carriers' interest in trying to hold costs down, the coverage of the branches was not very dense. It was minimal,” Hibler said. “So those sites did not look as natural as they should have. That has shifted. Pine trees now, for the most part, have more foliage on them and many more branches. They blend in better than in the earlier days. They look much more natural.”

Making a tree pole look like a natural tree takes some creativity. Depending on how much carriers want to spend, trees sites can have either brown paint or a bark-like textured rubber. For branches, there also are a variety of options, and each tower manufacturer takes a different approach. They range from basic green PVC piping to elaborate fiberglass branches and plastic leaves, all made of RF-friendly material to minimize interference.

Of course, even with natural-looking bark and branches, tree poles still will stand out in a forest because of their height.

“The sites typically are anywhere between 30 and 40 feet above the average tree line,” said Andrea Linskey, Verizon Wireless spokesperson (www.verizonwireless.com). “It's a big tree in comparison to everything else.”

But, in areas such as rural Harvard, where a tree site can hide in a rolling forest, the disguised antennas do blend with their surroundings.

“There's a tree local to us (in New York) in an area where we have low-lying trees surrounded by some pine trees, not of the same height, but of similar styles. Unless you're looking for it, you don't see it,” Gualtieri said. “It depends on who you buy the tree from and what setting it's in.”

It also depends on keeping the tree pole at a realistic height.

“We've had some requests to design a “200-foot-tall” pine tree, which we've elected not to do,” Hibler said. “We could do it, but if it's going into an area where the real trees are 50 feet tall, it doesn't really serve its purpose. It's just extremely expensive and not really doing what's needed.”

Cheap at Twice the Price

Extremely expensive is putting it mildly. Realistic tree sites can cost up to 10 times more than their traditional counterparts. Even the most basic disguises such as flagpoles will cost 20% to 50% more. On top of that, companies also face increased maintenance costs. So why would any carrier pay that much for a site?

“It does cost more,” said Jerome Perret, Allforsite owner & founder (www.allforsite.com) and Fortel adviser (www.fortel.fr). “But, if you get your permit in one month instead of three months, then you're at an advantage because you're getting money from the cell. It's something you have to take into account in your budget.”

Verizon's Linskey said customer expectations drove her company to pay for disguised sites in areas where nothing else would work.

“(Customers) need to be able to use their phones in the areas where they want,” Linskey said. “If we've gotten consistent complaints from customers that their calls drop along this roadway, and that culminates in a lot of dissatisfaction, then we need to go in and improve coverage there.”

Also, fighting zoning boards or city regulators can sometimes cost as much as the most expensive disguised sites.

“Some of the carriers are stubborn,” said Brian Reece, Summit Manufacturing (www.summitmfg.com) manager of engineering. “If they keep pushing and pushing (for a particular site), they could end up in court. Sometimes they just say, ‘Look, we'll put the money into a tree and not into a lawyer's pocket.’”

Reece said tree poles made up 3.5% of the wireless poles his company manufactured last year.

“It's a viable part of our business, despite the cost,” he said.

Companies are aware that high prices deter the use of disguised sites. Many are working to standardize their products in an effort to lower costs.

“It is a specialized product, so I don't see (the price) dropping drastically,” said Dirk Tillery, FWT (www.fwtinc.com) director of customer development. “But, if companies come up with more standardized products, I can see that deterring some of the costs.”

Perret said his company was working to standardize rooftop-chimney disguises on buildings throughout Europe. Flagpoles aren't very common in Europe, he said, but most buildings have at least one chimney. So, false chimneys blend in well as an antenna disguise.

“We used to design them especially for each rooftop,” he said. “But now, as we have more and more demand, we have started to design standardized solutions, and then we just adapt the chimney to the environment.”

Future Growth

The higher costs associated with disguised sites are convincing more carriers to co-locate. In fact, when carriers have to build expensive sites, they occasionally make the sites bigger so they can rent out the extra space and help offset the cost.

As disguised-site technology becomes more widely known among communities, many have become increasingly demanding of wireless providers. But carriers, armed with the knowledge that a good site is worth paying for, have shown they usually are willing to search out compromises with city authorities.

“There's much more acceptance on the part of the carriers today than there was in the early days,” Hibler said. “They still resist doing anything different to some extent, but not with the fervor that they used to. They're becoming a little more community-conscious, perhaps.”