George wrote:

> tmobile doesn't bother with towers in my area. They just make a deal
> with the quickie mart or office building owner and plop a couple panels
> on the roof and connect them to their little mailbox sized batteryless
> cabinet.

That's exactly what Cingular, and later T-Mobile tried to do where in my
area, for a 1900 MHz GSM site. The grocery store backed up to a
neighborhood that successfully fought the tower there as it would have
required a zoning exception to allow the tower. Cingular/T-Mobile tried
to get Walgreen's to allow them to put up a tower, then they tried to
get two different churches to allow a tower in their crosses, and were
turned down. Now T-Mobile's putting up a monopole that isn't attached to
a building.

The area can be seen at "http://i13.tinypic.com/6jez328.jpg".

"http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_7762192"

It was interesting to read the comments by residents (one of whom I
know). Duh, the reason so few people use T-Mobile is the poor coverage,
so saying the tower isn't needed because so few people use T-Mobile is
circular logic. The local T-Mobile store is very good about not selling
to residents that have no coverage at their house. The other comment
about not needing the tower because the woman has no problem with
coverage is because she probably has Verizon or AT&T, which a recent
city survey showed that most residents have because they're the only two
carriers that work well around here.