Public Safety - A New Cell Phone Era

Mobile telephone service has entered a new phase that is too little recognized, Public Safety. In recent years medical first responders have increasingly relied on mobile telephone technology to provide a connection to emergency room personnel while en route, sirens screaming, to the hospital. Vital signs, EKGs, and other data alert the emergency room physicians and staff, as well as giving them the ability to transmit lifesaving treatment instructions to the EMTs.

Newer mobile telephones are GPS chip equipped. This technology enables more than the special features your service provider would like you to purchase. GPS enabled mobile telephones can be mapped and located within one meter, give or take –a yard for us “metric deniers.” For you privacy types, just turn your phone off if you don’t want anyone to be able to find you.

For the rest of us, think of this: what if your home is on fire, or you are out for a walk, or cycling, or boating and need help? Even if you are barely able to call 911 the medical first responders can find you. In any emergency, mobile telephone GPS technology makes us all safer.

In 1959 when a mobile telephone was installed in my car, it was an oddity. The birth of cellular in the early 1980s dramatically improved the service. A marketing company I owned was hired to help launch this new concept. Our job was to find people who could afford a $3,000 phone for their car and $200-$400 a month to use it. In our wildest dreams none of us every imagined the scene today. Nor could we have imagined its evolution into a public safety necessity.

For reasons that are important only to the geeks among us, the more folks using their mobile phones at any one time, the more cells (tower locations) are needed. The federal government has placed these towers in the same category as any utility. While localities have some say as to their location, in the end they cannot prevent them from popping up where they are needed. Providing service to the users takes priority.

That ruling assumes new importance as cellular mobile telephone service takes on an increasingly important public safety role. The definition of “needed” has changed dramatically. Where once local governments could push tower locations around a mile or so to satisfy their constituents’ concerns, any move that diminishes ideal coverage patterns can no longer be justified or tolerated.

Cellular tower signals have two basic characteristics: they are very weak (good for +/- a mile) and they travel pretty much in a straight line. If they run into any natural or manmade obstacle they are cut off. So even a minor site change can leave an area on the edge of a cell with little or no signal. Not what you want if you are in an ambulance headed for an emergency room. Not what you want if you are walking, hiking, boating, driving, or even alone at home and need help. A weak signal or no signal is now a life or death matter.

Federal law does not permit health issues to enter into tower location considerations. But the myth survives that the RF signal they transmit is a health risk. As I mentioned, cellular signals are very weak. Much weaker, say, than the RF transmissions from radio and TV stations, Ham operators, government and private two-way radio systems and a host of other RF sources. Not to mention Mother Nature, who has bombarded the earth with RF signals since the beginning of time.

Our TV sets and computers give off RF signals. Cellular towers add next to nothing, no matter how close you live to them. There is no indication that individuals who have worked in extremely high RF atmospheres for decades have experienced any health problems. Manmade RF signals have been around for about ninety years. If there were any grounds for concern they would have showed up years ago.

The RF signals from cellular telephone towers have a new role that is life saving, not life threatening. The rules for locating these towers need to be updated. They need to be put in the best available location to provide ideal coverage. Anything that stands in the way of that goal needs to be struck down.

Visual issues can be addressed. Towers disguised as palm or pine trees, massive sculptures, church steeples, bell towers, are all available to mitigate visual damage. That’s the only avenue that should be allowed those opposing what has become a vital public service tool.