“It comes down to how … stupid the elected officials … are. There are many stupid cities around the country – really dumb. They’re greedy…They don’t give a s*** about their constituents.”
-Mobilitie CEO Gary Jabara quoted by Don Bishop (the Executive Editor and Associate Publisher of AGL Media Group) in “Seeing Wireless Service as Essential Speaks to the Future of Wireless Infrastructure.” AGL Magazine, March 2017, p. 38
That was the opening quote in the NATOA (et al) Reply Comments in the Mobilitie Petition for Declaratory Ruling. Read the entire reply comments here: NATOA REPLY COMMENTS.
What strikes me as “really dumb” is how Mobilitie’s patron, Sprint has not figured out how (or doesn’t care) to control the mouth that spews such ignorance with such arrogance.
A joke going around the industry is that the DAS companies created Mobilitie so that they’d look good in comparison. Hummm.
This post is part of my contribution to the ongoing public policy debate and discussions regarding the current Mobilitie build for Sprint. Mobilitie has developed the illustration shown in Figure 1, below, apparently as a way to show local governments and the public Mobilitie’s various pole configurations in at least block form. Most recently, a week ago, Mobilitie presented this very illustration to a group of local government telecom officials in Southern California at the SCAN NATOA meeting. I attended that meeting.
Take a close look at Figure 1 and then please continue to read on.Figure 1. Illustration created by Mobilitie. This illustration is presumably copyright by Mobilitie. Used here under the Fair Use Doctrine.
The problem with Mobilitie’s illustration in Figure 1 is that it grossly misrepresents and under-represents the scale and impact of their proposed facilities. Mobilitie’s illustration has no indicated scale, and the pole elements are not scaled to each other. Mobilitie’s illustration is, in my opinion, deceptive and misleading.
I have taken Mobilitie’s illustration and through the magic of Photoshop scaled the poles to each other. I started with the reasonable assumption that the light standard and equipment/antenna configuration topped out at about 34 feet above ground level. In Figure 2, below, that’s the pole on the left. Then, knowing that Mobilitie has been promoting 75 foot tall wood utility poles in various communities around the country, I scaled the middle pole in Figure 2 to be approximately 75 feet above ground level. Finally, I scaled the transmission pole on the right hand side of the illustration to be about 120 feet tall, which is the height that Mobilitie promotes around the country for theses tallest poles. Here is Figure 2:
Figure 2. Illustration created by Mobilitie, which has been annotated and scaled by Dr. Jonathan L. Kramer. This illustration is a derivative of an illustration presumably copyright by Mobilitie. Created and used here under the Fair Use Doctrine.
As you can see from Figure 2, which is now scaled against the street light pole, the height impacts of the utility and transmission poles are substantially greater than one would expect simply relying on Mobilitie’s illustration. Also, it is my opinion, based on Mobilitie plans I have seen and reports I have reviewed that the widths of all three poles is misrepresented in Mobilitie’s illustrations. I have not tried to account for those width errors in this analysis, and leave that task for the reader.
Finally, in Figure 3 below, I have prepared an animated graphic that will help to better frame Mobilitie’s illustration against the reality of Mobilitie’s plans. You may want to download this to better see it on your screen.
Figure 3. Illustration created by Mobilitie, which has been annotated, scaled, and animated by Dr. Jonathan L. Kramer. This illustration is a derivative of an illustration presumably copyright by Mobilitie. Created and used here under the Fair Use Doctrine.
What is the point of all of this? In my mind, the key point is that local governments and their constituents have a fair right to demand a reasonable level of accuracy when asked to consider projects that will impact their communities. I believe that Mobilitie’s graphic in Figure 1, regardless whatever their intent in presenting it, ends up being quite deceptive by its lack of internal and external scales both for height and width.
If you would like to download Mobilitie’s entire PowerPoint presented last week, click here.
Finally, given the national importance of the ongoing public discussion regarding Mobilitie’s nationwide project for Sprint (and maybe others in the future), I encourage you to share this posting.
Rumors are circulating that Verizon is considering buying Comcast. Largely ignoring the horrible public policy and anti-competitive issues, the deal would make sense from various technology standpoints.
Consider:
Comcast runs one of the largest Wi-Fi networks in the U.S. Verizon needs Wi-Fi as a critical element of offloading traffic from its cellular/PCS/AWS networks. Cellular nodes, like Wi-Fi nodes can be installed and provisioned in less than an hour.
Comcast has significant cable passings in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Colorado, California, and Washington State, with smaller footprints in New Mexico, Alabama, Mississippi, Arizona, and the Twin Cities. Comcast is already where Verizon wants to be for 5G+…150 feet from the customer.
Comcast has largely been able to deploy Wi-Fi nodes without local governments applying their various wireless ordinances to those installations. Verizon will argue that installing Wi-Fi/5G+ nodes should be exempt from local wireless ordinances.
Comcast’s backhaul and inter-city fiber network is national and dynamic. Verizon can utilize that network to increase its own inter-city transport capacity keeping much more of its wireless traffic on its own end-to-end network.
Verizon can (and should) do what Comcast has not: Get rid of coaxial subscriber drops in favor of wireless drops, which would tremendously reduce the cable network in-home maintenance and labor force costs for Verizon.
There are other reasons why a Verizon purchase of Comcast would make sense, not the least of which would be to battle back against AT&T’s purchase of DirecTV and the Time Warner programming assets.
Will Dish Network be next to fall? How about SiriusXM?
In this new Tumpian era, what would have been unthinkable a week ago might need some rethinking.
Jonathan
PS… Attention Verizon and Comcast legal departments: The combination logo at the top of this page is a parody to illustrate my opinion piece for commenting and criticizing purposes only. Really. Don’t get bunched up over it.
Martha DeGrasse of RCR reports on AT&T’s plans for small cells. She quotes Arunabha Ghosh, AT&T Labs’ Director of Wireless Communications, who said, “If you want to use 500 megahertz of spectrum and deliver 100 megabits per second, you have to have the sites like 200 meters apart maximum, 100 meters for autonomous vehicles,” he said. “A city block in Austin is 200-250 meters. You are talking about several small cells deployed every block to support this 100 megabits per second that we need.”
With four national carriers (at least today), now you’re talking about many hundreds of thousands of new small cells, mostly if not entirely in the public right of ways and utility easements, at the rate of 4 sites per block in densely populated areas.
I say, “Look ma…no hands on the wheel, but ONE HECK of a lot of small cell sites!”
In her article, “In T-Mobile Wireless Equipment Dispute, San Francisco Wins on Aesthetics” (September 20, 2016) reporter Bloomberg/BNA Lydia Beyoud discusses some of the key impacts of San Francisco’s appellate win in the case. I provided her with insights and several quotes. I link the decision to 5G deployment pressures which drive carriers to want to build sites in the public right of way very close to users.
(June 8, 2016) Today the Wall Street Journal is running an article titled, “Sprint’s Wireless Fix: More Telephone Poles” by Ryan Knutson. The subhead is, “Plan to improved network delayed as communities struggle with the unusual antenna requests.” The article describes Mobilitie’s troubled start building the next Sprint network, including putting in facilities without benefit of, ah, government permits. My favorite is Baltimore story where Mobilitie dropped a site into the middle of a sidewalk handicap ramp. The city wasn’t amused and filed Mobilitie $5,000 after they abated that particular public nuisance.
While some industry observers have dubbed Sprint’s plan to decommission many or most of its macrocell sites in favor of pole-top cell sites as “Project Network Suicide,” Sprint claims that it will cost them 60% to 70% less to deploy its new network. This rose-colored view is likely to evaporate rather quickly as these particularly ugly sites are erected and residents rebel over sites like the one pictured below.
A Mobilitie site in Los Angeles built to serve Sprint. Photo: Jonathan Kramer
Expect Lawsuits
I foresee Sprint (through it surrogate, Mobilitie) filing many law suits against local governments that object to the disamenity caused by pole top installations like that shown above, or worse, to new 70′ to 120′ wood poles placed next to and even inside residential neighborhoods as Mobilitie proposes in various communities. Like the lawsuits filed by Crown Castle, I expect that the carrier-in-fact – here, Sprint – will not in the foreground so that they can be insulated from having to report those lawsuits to the financial community.
Read the WSJ article, which I had the privilege of contributing to, including providing the WSJ with the Mobilitie site photograph that accompanied the article.
With the commencement of the California Utility Pole Authority … Mobilitie … Interstate Transport and Broadband build in the City of Los Angeles, this seems like a good time to give you a tour of what [insert your favorite nom de plume here] is actually building on City of Los Angeles street lights.
In words, it goes like this: From an existing or new Sprint site or Mobilitie somewhere a radio signal is transmitted outwards. Nearby Mobilitie sites pick up the signal with a device called a UE relay (User Equipment Relay). From there the signal is sent to a remote radio unit (“RRU”), which converts the incoming signal from the UE Relay to Sprint frequencies. From the RRU, two coaxial cables connect the RRU to the antenna on Sprint’s frequency, and on to Sprint’s customers. There is also an electrical power distribution box to power the UE Relay and RRU. In the case of the City of Los Angeles, electrical power is tapped off of the street lighting power circuit. Where that’s not an option, Mobilitie may have to install a power company electrical meter somewhere on the light standard, or nearby in a meter pedestal.
Here’s what a newly installed Mobilitie (sorry, Interstate Transport and Broadband) site looks like in Los Angeles, with call-outs to identify what I’ve described above. If you’d like to see more photos of new Mobilitie sites in Los Angeles, visit CellTowerPhotos.com.
I posted earlier today about my concerns regarding T-Mobile’s CellSpot. Beyond the concerns I wrote about, the Washington Post today has a very informative piece about how this device will metaphorically reach into the wallets and purses of T-Mobile subscribers who opt to install a CellSpot. An important read.
Now we know one way T-Mobile might intend to to fund its largess.
I’m simply amazed by the press coverage T-Mobile is getting from the announcement that it will offer free 3G/4G/4G-LTE hot spots. As their Fact Sheet says, “the 4G LTE CellSpot ensures customers with a limited signal will now have strong, dependable voice and data coverage in their home or small business.”
“Here Spot!” “Heeeeer Spot!”
All you need to do is request one of these babies from T-Mobile, give them $25 as a security deposit, plug it in to the wall, hook it up to the Internet, and away you go.
And that’s a problem.
You have to pay for T-Mobile’s coverage in two more ways. First, you have to provide your own power to operate the unit. In the grand scheme, that’s not much money each year. I’m guessing something like $15. Then you have to connect this baby to your own internet connection, which then takes some undisclosed portion of your Internet to provide connectivity to the CellSpot. Have a slow connection…or dial up…then you might have a problem.
What’s the real problem, here?
The way I see it, this big splash in the press is a tacit admission by T-Mobile’s that its company-provided radio frequency coverage AND capacity is far less than adequate, especially for in-building service areas. Viewed that way, T-Mobile’s announcement appears to be painting flaming red lipstick on a pink porcine. Still not pretty.
So who can connect to these units?
I’m not sure. Traditionally, carriers have required cell site hotspot users to register their phones so that only they can use the hotspot. If T-Mobile goes the other way and allows any T-Mobile user to connect via any CellSpot, then there’s another problem: T-Mobile’s customers installing CellSpots are now also funding connectivity for T-Mobile to provide service to third parties.
Hey? What the GPS light?
If you noticed the GPS light on the photo of the CellSpot, good for y0u. That’s because this unit needs to be near an window what it can have a view of the heavens. Huh? The unit needs to receive reliable GPS data from GPS satellites so that T-Mobile knows where the unit is located. More huh? The FCC requires that all wireless carriers be able to identify the location of 911 callers. To meet this federal obligation, T-Mobile collects GPS data from each customer-installed unit so that it can tie the GPS location back to a 911 caller. That’s actually a good thing, especially if you want the fire department to know where you’re calling from in the event of an emergency.
The bad thing for GPS (and cellular reception) is that many high-rise buildings effectively interfere with outside reception they are large grounded metal boxes with hybrid metalized window tint that substantially reduces signal strength. Here’s a very informative YouTube video that illustrates my point:
The bottom lines in my view:
T-Mobile effectively admits its own network coverage is not adequate.
T-Mobile shifts the burden of providing coverage to its users by taking their power and Internet connections without compensation.
T-Mobile gets to hold on to its subscriber deposits, apparently as interest free loans.
I’m going to wait to see how long it takes for a class action law suit to be filed against T-Mobile in connection (hey, it’s a pun) with the CellSpot. Such a law suit seems inevitable to me.
With this, I suppose that T-Mobile’s slogan that it is the “Un-Carrier” might be amended to claim that it is the “Un-Coverage-Carrier.” And that’s too bad since I think many of T-Mobile’s service plan offerings are innovative.
64-bit WEP
128-bit WEP
WPA2-PSK
WPA-PSK
WPA-Enterprise
WPA2-Enterprise
WPS support
Firewall and access control
Firewall: SPI intrusion detection,DoS protection, IPv6 firewall
Access control: Parental control, Network service filter, URL filter, Port filter
Management
UPnP, IGMP v1/v2/v3, DNS Proxy, DHCP, NTP Client,
DDNS, Port Triger, Universal Repeater, System Event Log
SNMP (tender project only, not for retail)
TR-069 ( tender project only, not for retail)
VPN support
IPSec Pass-Through
PPTP Pass-Through
L2TP Pass-Through
PPTP server
OpenVPN server
PPTP client
L2TP client
OpenVPN client
Applications
Download master
Support BT, NZB, HTTP, ED2K
Support encryption, DHT, PEX and magnet link
Upload and download bandwidth control
Image: JPEG
Audio: mp3, wma, wav, pcm, mp4, lpcm, ogg
Video: asf, avi, divx, mpeg, mpg, ts, vob, wmv, mkv, mov
QoS
WMM
User definable rules for IP/MAC/Port.
Upload and Download bandwidth management.
ACK/SYN/FIN/RST/ICMP with Highest priority
Guest Network
2.4GHz guest network x 3
5GHz guest network x 3
Printer Server
Multifunctional printer support (Windows only)
LPR protocol support
File server: Samba and FTP server with account management
PPTP VPN server
Network map
Traffic monitor
WAN connection type
Internet connection type : Automatic IP, Static IP, PPPoE (MPPE supported), PPTP, L2TP
3G/ LTE USB dongle
Android USB tethering
Support dual wan fail over and load balance
Ports
4 x RJ45 for 10/100/1000/Gigabits BaseT for LAN
1 x RJ45 for 10/100/1000/Gigabits BaseT for WAN
USB 2.0 x 1
USB 3.0 x 1
Buttons
WPS button
Reset button
Power button
Wireless on/off button
LED
PWR x 1
AIR x 2
LAN x 4
WAN x 1
USB x 2
OS support
Windows® 8.1
Windows® 8
Windows® 7
Windows® Vista
Windows® 2000
Windows® ME
Windows® XP
Mac OS X 10.6
Mac OS X 10.7
Mac OS X 10.8
Mac OS X 10.9
Dimensions 220 x 83.3 x 160mm (WxDxH)
Weight 640g
Package content
1 x TM-AC1900 Wireless-AC1900 Dual Band Gigabit Router
1 x RJ-45 cable
1 x Power adapter
1 x QSG9
3 x Wi-Fi antennas
Special features
3G/4G data sharing
Printer server
AiDisK
Multiple SSIDs
Parental Control
VPN server
VPN client
My law firm professionals and I have negotiated hundreds of leases, lease modifications, agreements, ordinances, etc. over the years. We repeated hear the wireless carriers talk about the ‘rights’ they must have.
Nope. That’s not how it works for the savvy landlord.
We advise clients (and just about anyone else who will listen) that the wireless carrier is negotiating for privileges, not rights.
For example,
The very valuable privilege to have a lease extend for 25 or more years;
The very valuable privilege to deny the landlord virtually any means to get out of the lease;
The very valuable privilege for the carrier to get out of the lease on 30 to 60 days’ notice;
The very valuable privilege to take hundreds or thousands of square feet of land for sucker rents of as little as 10¢ per square foot;
The very valuable privilege to suspend rent for some casualty, even when the casualty is the due to the carrier;
The very valuable privilege to impose great duties on the landlord compared with those imposed on themselves; and
Many other valuable privileges that solely benefit the wireless carrier, most commonly to the detriment of the landlord.
You get the idea…the boilerplate deals offered by carriers are hardly equal or fair to landlords. That’s a great reason to use an attorney who knows where the obvious (and the hidden) landmines are to be found in the documents, but I digress.
With the privileges the carrier seeks come payments to the landlord. The greater the bundle of privileges, the greater the payment to the landlord for granting those privileges.
Only when the lease is executed do the privileges convert to rights. Not one second sooner!
Landlords negotiating with the carrier’s agent (and all the better if the landlord has competent legal counsel helping…ahem…) should carefully listen for the words and phrases ‘rights’ or ‘we need’ or ‘we must have’ when uttered by the negotiator for the carrier. Every time that those words and phrases rear their ugly heads…and that will happy often…remind the rep that they are negotiating for privileges, which only convert to rights when the deal is done, fully valued, and the paperwork is fully executed.
The skill and mindset of the landlord’s negotiator for a cell site lease most often makes a huge difference in the result and value produced for the landlord.
