OCEAN CITY — Resort officials this week made it abundantly clear they are strongly against a proposal to install as many as 90 cell phone towers, some as tall as 38 feet, throughout Ocean City and are asking residents and visitors to join in the opposition.
Two weeks ago, through a seemingly innocuous legal advertisement, the private sector company Crown Castle announced a proposal to install as many as 90 distributed antenna systems, essentially cell phone towers, at locations throughout Ocean City, including many of the resort’s residential neighborhoods. The towers would range from about 18 feet to as high as 38 feet and are needed to expand bandwidth and improve Internet accessibility in the densely populated resort.
Crown Castle approached resort officials in 2015 about installing the necessary technology to expand bandwidth and improve Internet accessibility, but that initial proposal called for installing the hardware on existing structures including light poles and other utility poles. The Mayor and Council had some concerns about even that concept, but when Crown Castle returned this spring with a vastly different proposal to install as many as 90 new towers throughout Ocean City, resort officials took exception to the plan.
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15 comments:
We need better cell service.
You do not have to turn your town into an eye sore to get better cell service.
Why would anyone want to oppose it if you could get better cell service.
On many summer evenings there has been almost non-existent internet connections due to the amount of traffic.
I am all for making the situation better... But how about this:
Make a deal with Delmarva Power to bury the lines in town. THEN let's talk to the cell phone companies about bandwidth.
Lets think about beautifying the town first, then talk about making money for the cell phone companies.
Use the water towers. Well, not the newly painted pretty one.
What company are the towers for? Sprint is awful here. We need more towers for them.
Bury power lines on a sand bar? What do you think is going to happen when salt water surrounds those power lines...buzz, ZAP! No power!
You have a summer population that swells to 200,000 plus! That is a lot of cell phones for a sand bar approximately 8 miles long and maybe a half mile wide at its widest. They need to accommodate the cell traffic if you are going to have a population that large. Oh! That's right it's a family 'resort' so who needs a cell phone onumber vacation!
Since there is a total shortage of existing buildings on the island that could rent roof space and sell power to the cell companies to run their equipment, new towers, one for each company, will have to be erected on the skyline and have ugly wires run to them.
Is that the BS you are trying to get us to believe?
Put them in West O.C. ;>)
1039 - really not a bad idea since West OC/Pines will eventually become oceanfront property!
This type of planning is succession in nature as well as strategic. GROSSLY missing in City Hall!
Use existing water towers, high rises and spend whats needed not to have to re-hash this time and time again. How long has it taken to upgrade the community service communications (police, fire/EMS, etc)????
Tiny time thinking is still prevalent!
Anonymous said...
Use the water towers. Well, not the newly painted pretty one.
October 5, 2016 at 11:30 PM
You can't be serious? That water tower is gay looking and ugly!
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Bury power lines on a sand bar? What do you think is going to happen when salt water surrounds those power lines...buzz, ZAP! No power!
October 6, 2016 at 6:22 AM
What do ou think will happen when your child steps on one of those power lines. ZAP! No Child!
38 feet really isn't that tall. Someone posted a picture of what they wanted to do on facebook and it was actually nice looking. It has street lights on each side of it. You could hardly tell it was a tower.
Put them on a buoy out in the bay. Let the tourist dodge them out there.
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