It actually makes no sense, none at all.
They want the "Tower Companies" to take down all their towers, and rely on 10
tall towers, 500 foot each, to provide communications throughout the county, for
all radio services.
To the uninformed, it sounds like a wonderful idea. Gosh, those 500 foot towers would
talk forever.
To the knowledgable, this won't work for so many reasons.
1. Coverage. The top part of the tower will be reserved for those public safety
systems. Pretty good coverage for 5 watt portables and 50 watt mobiles. But for
a .6th of a watt Cell or PCS phone, it still will be iffy if at all. Propagation at at PCS frequencies
means your signal drops at about 2-3 miles. (Useable) Remember, all the other
towers are coming down, and these towers are going to be in the rural areas. Any idea
how those town or suburban dwellers are going to get coverage? What about the very short
range from Wireless Internet Providers?
2. Microwave. No, not the ones to heat up your chicken nuggets, but the microwave point to
point systems already in place, and those that are going up all the time. Line of sight rules, and
even though we can try to bend the laws of physics, we just can't seem to break them.
3. Back to Cellular. Most of the new builds for Cellular are not really related to coverage anymore,
but related to CAPACITY. A cell site can only handle so much - so a Cell company will pick another
site that may enhance coverage, but will enhance capacity. 10 sites will only handle so much
capacity, and only 10 will be a step back for most carriers.
4. Financial. 26.5 to build these 10 towers? HUH? If the county wants em, I can arrange construction of these towers for a fraction of that, 10 to 20 percent of that figure. 800K to maintain them yearly? And while a cell company may be willing to agree to financial terms (if somehow the practical and technical issues could be fixed) no tower company would be able to compete. Why should the county be locking them out of business in the county?
The county has already set themselfs up for a lawsuit with their zoning ordinance approved in September, the one where they mandate that anyone building a new tower be REQUIRED to give free space to "public service" groups and agencies. Before we even debate what exactly a "public service" group is (Taxis provide a public service) and what a public SAFETY agency is, lets consider how the county can legally take away my property without just compensation? According to federal law, they can't, and if I have a tower in the area every inch of that is my leaseable property.
I can guess what happened here though. RCC wanted to raise up their tower, so they pumped the local EMA up with these fictictious figures. They primed him on what to say, and what to do, so they could slide by the zoning. It remains to be seen if they are held to the mandate requiring them to provide free space!