AT&T Coverage Could Improve with Distributed Antenna System

AT&T engineers showed Palo Alto residents Tuesday night the company's latest plan for improving weak cellphone and broadband coverage throughout the city, and it's not by building big new towers.

The project, which would use a Distributed Antenna System (DAS), was showcased at a community hearing organized by the company. Residents who attended the event were able to address their concerns to AT&T experts.

The DAS plan would make use of a network of small antennas that would be placed on top of several electrical poles through out several areas of Palo Alto. The employment of this system would in principle result in a more efficient wireless mobile coverage network for all AT&T users in the area.

“What we're doing is building smaller nodes through out the city to give better coverage,” said Minh Nguyen, AT&T area manager in charge of the engineering and construction of the DAS development. The mobile wireless system makes use of cellphone towers, or macrocell sites, whose signals can falter because of weather, large buildings and even trees.

“For Palo Alto [DAS] is more efficient because of the geography; in other area, where they might not have as much trees, a macro site might be more efficient," said Nguyen.

Several residents attending the meeting expressed a sincere desire to have a better mobile wireless system in their hometown.

“I live in old Palo Alto, and our cellphone coverage is miserable,” said Joe Rolfe, a retired engineer and AT&T subscriber. “I support it,” affirmed Rolfe, when asked if he was in favor of the project.

Despite the coverage benefits that this new system can bring, there have been concerns raised by people who fear that health-related risks come with the increased exposure to electromagnetic radiation.

These fears range from its effect on the human brain to other negative health dangers. This is a concern that AT&T has confronted by putting the amount of radio frequencies that would be emitted by each of their antennas into context.

“The AT&T proposal for the DAS system everywhere is more then a 100 times below the Federal Communications Commission’s standard,” said William Hammett of Hammett and Edison, a consulting firm that carried out studies for AT&T on the total amount of electro-magnetic emissions that from the antennas of a DAS network. The standard by the FCC is the level of exposure that is considered safe.

“All the science shows that there is no issue to exposure equal to the standard or below,” he said.

“I am not worried at all,” said Camelia Sutorius, a registered nurse and resident of Palo Alto who attended the meeting. “I am definitely in support of it, I think it is needed given the amount cellphone and data use in the area.”

Health fears over the radio frequencies emitted by cellphone towers have been claimed to lower the prices of homes in Florida according to a study from 2004. However, AT&T insists that this will not be the case with DAS, and the real estate values will not be negatively affected.

“Broadband is a service that people want,” said Eric Lovecchio, Realtor and property value consultant with Pacific West Real Estate. After looking at the sales and studies on recent purchases of homes near macrocell towers in places like Cupertino, and others like Oakland where there is a DAS system in place, Lovecchio asserted that the price of homes near wireless structures were not adversely impacted.

“Having their cellphones work and having broadband infrastructure in the community is really important to buyers," he said.