Do I want a cellphone tower on my property?

AT&T wants to install a new tower in this area, offered me $800/month for a spot to put it.

It may be "safe" at the beginning, upgraded to questionable new technology through the years, they want a 30-year lease and their tower could evolve into anything. It might be no more than ~500 feet away from the house.

An $800/mo income generator for the rest of my life! This is a really bad idea, right?

Reply to
Banders
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Not necessarily. I expect this is a standard rate, but I would check around to see. They may low ball you initially and be willing to pay more.

You have to decide if you are willing to live with the tower view. It's not like the Eiffel tower where one of the main opponents of it had breakfast every day in the restaurant in the base because it had the only good view of the city left! lol

Why do you say "no more than 500 feet away"? Are the leasing a spot on your property or leasing a large area? Is there woods between you and the tower?

Consider how this will impact your resale value of your home and make sure there is something in the contact about restoring the land to its former state when they leave.

What is "questionable technology" to you? What are you concerned about?

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  Rick C. 

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Reply to
Rick C

Let's see, $10k/year, $300k for 30 years? Whew! No wonder our phone bills are so high. But you might as well get on the right side of the equation.

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Reply to
Winfield Hill

On a sunny day (Sat, 8 Jun 2019 09:37:48 -0700) it happened Banders wrote in :

Do not do it, higk level RF radiation for a long time is dangerous.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

Typically more than one carrier occupies a tower. I'd want my contract to include additional rent from each additional carrier.

Reply to
Bob Engelhardt

If he's worried about that, he can take a small portion of the $300k, and clad portions of his house with tinfoil under siding, or use metal siding, etc. Doing the bedroom wall and one or two other rooms could cut total exposure to 1/4.

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Reply to
Winfield Hill

It's only 30 years! Mikek

PS, get a yearly inflation adjustment. CPI + 1%.

Reply to
amdx

That is true, high level RF radiation is dangerous. In this case that is a moot point. He won't be exposed to high levels of radiation.

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  Rick C. 

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Reply to
Rick C

Typically the carrier doesn't deal with this although the OP said he heard from AT&T. Because most towers are used my many services the tower is owne d by a company just for that and rent to all carriers on an equal footing. The property owner is not part of that negotiation.

Property owners usually have little room for negotiation since the company will go to his neighbor if he causes too much trouble. They may already be talking to them.

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  Rick C. 

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Reply to
Rick C

Go for it

The signal strength below the antenna is a lot lower than if you just live in the neighborhood due to the emission lobes

In Denmark this was investigated thoroughly.

Also, the emissions from the mobile phone is higher than the mast, and lowest if you are close to the mast, since it turns down related to the signal strength:

formatting link

Warning: danish

Cheers

Klaus

Reply to
Klaus Kragelund

On a sunny day (Sat, 8 Jun 2019 11:22:57 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Rick C wrote in :

Well 152 meter, wide beam, microwave, high power Have fun. I would not do it, no way.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

I have many years of experience in the tower business. Here are my thoughts. PM me if you want to discuss.

1) $800/mo is cheap. We used to charge carriers (like AT&T) at least $1,500 a month, and that wa s back in 1998 dollars. And that was for just one set of antennas, not the multitude of antennas a typical cell site has now. If they have the right to sublease to other carriers, they are making money off your land. 2) 30 year lease is about right. A cell site costs a lot of money these d ays. 3) You could do a joint-venture with Vertical Bridge, or SBA, or American Tower, or maybe another company (near you). Let then negotiate the best de al, and then you don't have to do anything. Not even collections!! (Altho ugh AT&T pays well, just not on time.) If AT&T needs a tower here, the oth er carriers probably do too. Another reason to joint-venture. You can max imize your profits. 4) Are you in an area where you think AT&T HAS to have a tower at your loc ation? How much flexibility do you think they might have? This concerns t he proximity of their other tower assets in relation to mobile data/voice t raffic demands. 5) PM me your approximate location. I have every AT&T tower mapped (legit imately, not via some untrustworthy app). Maybe I can help you answer #4. 6) Carriers, in general, do not build as many macrocell towers as they use d to. Nowadays, they opt for smaller (lower to the ground) C-RAN nodes, an d in-building solutions (where 80% of the traffic is anyway). 7) At present, AT&T is on a MAJOR COST CUTTING initiative, including staff reductions, etc... I'm surprised they're building any new cell sites, fra nkly. But then, this is just a land lease, and they may try to structure i t so you don't get paid until they construct. (Don't accept that!) 8) RF Radiation is not a problem to be concerned with expect, perhaps, in very extreme circumstances. In the thousands of tower sites I've dealt wi th in my career, I think we only had (3) that were legitimate issues -- and all of those were broadcast TV towers, not cellular. 9) If you are on a hurricane coastline, or the location is situated in a j urisdiction that has lots of building code and/or zoning restrictions, fact or that into your price. Hurricane coastline because it means the tower fo undations will have to be deep (to prevent overturning in the wind), and th e zoning restrictions speak for themselves. Ditto for Nat'l Register of Hi storic Places, environmentally sensitive areas, tribal land, etc.., etc.. It's possible AT&T wants your location simply because it's easier to navig ate the above. 10) Whatever deal you make, AT&T will try to change it 20 times before the ink is even dry. Be prepared for that. (They have a building full of att orneys who have nothing better to do...) 11) Remember that a cell tower on your property may make it less attractiv e when you go to sell it later. (Unless it's sold as investment property, of course.)

I could go on and on. Just PM me with any questions. I would say (not knowing anything about the circumstances) that $800 is low ball. And you could probably get 2X just for negotiating it. (?). Still, I strongly recommend looking at Option-3 above, and kick those tires. (PM me first to make sure whatever company you elect doesn't themselves have a nearby tower to offer) -- though the carriers, AT&T included, already know where all the towers, rooftops, bridges, etc. are located (private, public and government).

One last thing: Visit fccinfo.com and download the Google Earth plug-in. This will let you map most towers in your area (those that are >200 feet, o r located within an airport's glideslope, or seaplane base, close to an Int erstate highway, or the FAA just wants it registered, etc.. Towers under

200' may be optionally registered. It's not a guaranteed 100% list due to the above regulatory exceptions, but it's close enough for your purposes si nce many cell towers are 200+ feet.

Good luck!!

Reply to
mpm

On a sunny day (8 Jun 2019 10:55:09 -0700) it happened Winfield Hill wrote in :

We All Live In A Yellow Submarine..

Tinfoil hat?

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

On a sunny day (Sat, 8 Jun 2019 11:27:27 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Rick C wrote in :

I'd think the reason prices are high is that nobody wants that stuff near their house. Also the old towers were noisy, for example because of the cryo coolers (like I have) used to cool the superconducting filters.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

y will go to his neighbor if he causes too much trouble. They may already be talking to them.

This used to be true, but not so much any more depending on the location. Since 3G, and especially 4G, you have to place the eNode-B at the traffic d emand. You simply can't cover it from non-optimal positions without affect ing capacity and throughput.

And that's true even for suburban neighborhoods, not just inner-city core ( which was always a problem, even for C-RAN).

Just how large a "search ring" is depends on capacity. Bottom line: If the carriers needs a particular lat/lon, they don't have a s many options as you might think.

These days, unless you're rural, and the carrier is only trying to bridge t he low-capacity traffic demand (or just to avoid dropped calls) on a road b etween two adjacent towns, that cell tower needs to be where it needs to be . (Lat/Lon specific, with a lot less room to wiggle.)

Reply to
mpm

the best part about Americans from a corporation's perspective is that you can buy most of 'em for such pitiful amounts of money lol

Reply to
bitrex

yup lol.

If they're going to the trouble of installing a completely new tower it'll probably be making them $800 a _minute_ in profit and they're like "here's $800 a month it's a good deal lol"

Reply to
bitrex

On Saturday, June 8, 2019 at 2:49:58 PM UTC-4, mpm wrote: I should have added more to complete my thoughts on #9.

A tower constructed in a hurricane coastline area costs a lot more money to build and operate. (Maybe 3x-5x, or more of the cost compared to a regular tower.) That high cost encourages co-location by several carriers.

Reply to
mpm

Tell the rep they can pay you $1k a month to f*ck their sister. They will respect you more at that point.

Reply to
bitrex

Damn. I also forgot to mention... When you download the Google Earth plug-in from FCCinfo.com, you want the layer called "ASR", which stands for the FCC's Antenna Site Registration - a database of towers required to be registered pursuant to FAA rules.

Reply to
mpm

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