The planning board’s decision was based on health concerns due to the possible negative environmental impact of telecommunication on the residents, especially the children studying at the school who could potentially be exposed to electromagnetic radiation. The town felt the residents would be ‘unsafe’ due to radio frequencies and rejected the company’s notion of building the tower on the land.
I mean, I think that the planning board is idiotic, but I don’t see why T-Mobile cares enough to fight it. If they don’t build it, the Wanaque is going to have crummy cell coverage. Let them have bad cell coverage and build a tower somewhere else. It’s not like this is the world’s only place that could use better cell coverage.
If I were cell companies, I’d just get together with the rest of the industry and start publishing a coverage score for cities for cell coverage. Put it online in some accessible database format, so that when places like city-data.com put up data on a city, they also show that the city has poor cell coverage and that would-be residents are aware of the fact.
A quick web search for third-party coverage information tells me that Wanaque has good coverage from Verizon and poor coverage from T-Mobile. It’s easy to guess why T-Mobile might be motivated to change that situation.
Speedtest.net bought a service that was doing this already sort of. I looked just now and I think it’s their “map” option on their mobile app. You need to switch between carriers to see coverage.
The tech was based off of manual speed tests and a background app that would measure coverage from a phone for a small area, about the size of 3 square acres.
I mean, I think that the planning board is idiotic, but I don’t see why T-Mobile cares enough to fight it. If they don’t build it, the Wanaque is going to have crummy cell coverage. Let them have bad cell coverage and build a tower somewhere else. It’s not like this is the world’s only place that could use better cell coverage.
If I were cell companies, I’d just get together with the rest of the industry and start publishing a coverage score for cities for cell coverage. Put it online in some accessible database format, so that when places like city-data.com put up data on a city, they also show that the city has poor cell coverage and that would-be residents are aware of the fact.
A quick web search for third-party coverage information tells me that Wanaque has good coverage from Verizon and poor coverage from T-Mobile. It’s easy to guess why T-Mobile might be motivated to change that situation.
https://www.verizon.com/coverage-map/
This shows that Verizon has good coverage in part of Wanaque, moderate coverage in part, and no coverage in part.
Speedtest.net bought a service that was doing this already sort of. I looked just now and I think it’s their “map” option on their mobile app. You need to switch between carriers to see coverage.
The tech was based off of manual speed tests and a background app that would measure coverage from a phone for a small area, about the size of 3 square acres.