It isn’t surprising that Industry Canada will require mandated tower sharing as part of its new rules for the AWS spectrum.
A series of articles in recent days in a variety of community papers points to a trend that had to have been considered: people don’t want towers in their backyards.
My local community paper spoke of local councillors looking into developing a comprehensive plan to deal with cell phone towers. The Toronto Star writes about residents of a Toronto neighbourhood challenging an agreement between a church and a carrier to build a “non-eyesore” 35-metre-tall communications tower – it will look like a flag pole, only taller.
We all want 5 bars of signal. We want capacity to be there when we want to make a call, send a message, pick up email. We want carriers investing in infrastructure. Just not in our backyard.
Carriers that have existing towers recognize the difficulty in building new sites and may be less willing to share their existing space because of concerns that they may need the capacity for their own requirements.
We want towers within sight of our cell phones; just not within sight of our eyes.
Industry Canada has launched a new consultation in order to work out the amendments to licenses for existing spectrum holders. We will want to see if imposing the tower sharing requirements – a new condition on current licenses – will be able to pass a challenge. How is it not a form of expropriation?