Many of the claims made in support for the tower on Heather Drive have been proven to be false. Here is a list:
Claim: The tower is needed to support a growing user base.
Fact: The population of San Carlos is shrinking (source), and T-Mobile's market share is also shrinking (source). Current national market share is about 12%, but in the Bay Area it is much less, because there are more i-phone users here.
Also in our canvassing of the Heather Drive area, we have only found 2 households which are T-Mobile subscribers, who also say they have never had a problem with coverage in their homes.
Claim: The tower will "provide TMobile with enhanced 911 services allowing them to triangulate the location of callers as is required by the FCC."
Fact: The Enhanced 911 initiative does not specifically call for triangulation as a method for locating callers, but instead only requires callers to be located with a certain degree of accuracy. The location can be obtained using a number of means which do not require multiple towers, such as gps (which is how Sprint and Verizon meet the requirements). In fact, the FCC fully expects new and different technologies to be used (source).
For it's part, T-Mobile uses a technology called U-TDOA, which is actually not even triangulation but does require multiple receivers. But, according to the company that provides the solution for T-Mobile (called TruePosition), these receivers can be installed as stand-alone units (source - U-TDOA: Enabling New Location-Based Safety and Security Solutions). In other words, you don't even need towers, just the receiver units.
The most important point here is that it is the mobile operators responsibility to meet the FCC E911 requirements, and cities are not obligated to help them to use the technology of their choice when alternatives exist which are less intrusive and more desirable for the neighborhood.
Claim: Mobile networks provide essential services after a natural disaster.
Fact: In several recent natural disasters, it is the cellular networks which become overloaded and unreliable, and not the traditional land-based networks. Such examples are the 2007 Bay Area earthquake (source) and the more recent quake in New Zealand (source). Even Verizon's spokesperson admits that cellular networks will never be as reliable (source).
Note: Incidentally, this claim was made by one of the members of the Planning Commission, in defense of T-Mobile.
Claim: Currently T-Mobile customers are not able to make 9-11 calls from inside their homes in the area around Heather Drive.
Fact: In the United States, the FCC requires that 911 always be available, even if there is not even a sim card in the phone (source). So, even if there was no T-Mobile service, as long as there was some service you could dial 911. But in any case, T-Mobile currently has excellent voice service to this area - what they are seeking is high-speed wireless data service.
Note: The residents have proven that calls can reliably be made from inside people's homes in this area. This data has been presented to the Planning Commission.
Claim: The area around Heather Drive has no 3G coverage. The evidence for this was a set of signal strength plots of the area, which were generated via computer simulation.
Fact: After the residents presented data showing that calls can currently be made from inside area homes, and raising a lot of questions about how the computer model worked, T-Mobile provided actual drive test data. This data showed most of the area to have a signal strength of -85db or better, which is quite good coverage and is considered more than reasonable by current standards. This data is currently not publicly available on-line, but can be obtained from the San Carlos Planning Commission.
Claim: -75dbm is the standard for reasonable level of service. This claim was made by the T-Mobile engineer at the first meeting of the Planning Commission.
Fact: When pressing this issue in court, T-Mobile uses -85dbm (which is much less) as the standard for reasonable coverage (source). Independent experts conclude that -85dbm is quite sufficient for in-home coverage (source), and the courts have rejected even -85dbm as a pseudo-standard (source). So by all accounts -85dbm is a more than reasonable level of coverage.
What is T-Mobile's objective, then? Their engineer admitted that the level of service they consider reasonable corresponds to 11Mbit data access, which is basically broad-band speed. Clearly no reasonable person would equate broadband data access with simply completing a phone call.
Note: The numbers above are RF power levels, and the units are decibel-milliwatts. Since they are negative values, a small number means greater signal strength. Generally the range is -75dbm (super high-quality) to -102dbm (the minimum on most phones).
... in progress - more coming soon ...
