Rogers hires Dialog to design their new W Van cell towers

[spm2013]

Build them, NIMBYs have iPhones.. I've seen them.

Many of us have dealt with spotty cellphone service on the North Shore, particularly closer to the mountains.

And reception will get worse, says Rogers, as houses are built at higher elevation and an increasing amount of data is consumed. That is unless more towers are built.

The mobile service provider is proposing three new towers for West Vancouver along the Upper Levels Highway.

They will be around 36 metres high so signals can reach above the district’s many tall trees.

“There are thousands of households on the North Shore that don’t have reliable service,” said Marc Draper, Rogers’s manager of radio engineering. Cars were recently sent around West Van to collect “drive data” to determine where coverage needs improving.

“West Vancouver is unique. It’s extremely hilly and a large growth of trees can completely obstruct service,” said Draper, adding rooftop antennae aren’t an option because they are too low to reach hard-to-get areas.

Rogers hired Dialog, a Vancouver-based architect firm, to design the towers which won’t have any visible antennae.

http://www.northshoreoutlook.com/news/211233011.html

“Rogers has no intention of adding any embellishments to the new tower design, nor does West Vancouver and there are no plans to do so. That would require local community support, which is not what is being pursued here. The illustration was just a means of visualizing what it *could* look like *if* a local government wanted to mark highway exits, traffic alerts or any other public purpose include art. Any embellishments would be those requested by the local community”

[idunno]

The cell service in the British Properties is sometimes non-existent. I used to work up there and would regularly lose service/have calls dropped. I think West Van is lucky to have any improvement at all over the typical cell tower design, and these will actually look pretty good. 36m is really tall!

[spm2013]

At least they don't have to worry about cell phone detonated car bombs from Al Qaeda...