A man who used to acquire properties for the wireless industry reflects on his former career
Responding to yesterday's notes, a man who used to acquire properties for the wireless industry reflects on his former career. He must remain anonymous:
"We as an industry have taken way too many liberties with communities and landowners, siting towers where ever we saw fit with absolutely no regard for the most suitable location, instead finding the cheapest or the easiest to get property that allowed us to reach our paypoint. We then bullied our way through zoning hearings or found an area where the residents could or would not object (often because they were uneducated or poor). We brought lawyers into hearings in small towns that could not afford to litigate and, without saying so, threatened to bankrupt their city coffers with lawsuits until they gave in.
"Carriers would hire anyone to do site acquisition and then fight back with lies and engineering malarkey to justify a particular site. I once had a rep from General Dynamics stand next to me at a hearing and say that they could not move a proposed tower 30 feet because of the specific RF engineering requirements needed. When asked the same question by the board about my client, I punted, probably continuing the nonsense. I said my company did not have the same problem but that I could not speak for the engineers of another firm."
"One of the practices I fully disagreed with from a site ac perspective was that of liberally replacing the site sketch in the lease with a completely different site design at a later date. Then relying upon lease language that allowed such a liberal change to beat the landowner complaints down. I no longer do much work for the carriers."