We can't live without our cell phones. Absolutely not. Let's be honest. Cell phone technology drives the way we live. Try going one hour without texting, calling, or surfing the Internet, and you'll see what I mean. The problem is, we think of our cell phones as magical devices that pull information from the air. We often don't stop to think about the millions of miles of wires that make cell phones possible. Those windowless buildings with the phone company's name on them in your city? They're filled with machinery that connects cell towers to the rest of the country's phone and data networks. Cell phones may be small, but they require huge machinery to work.
Cell Phone Towers: An Indispensable Part
The most visible part of the entire network is the cell phone tower. Cell phone towers are everywhere, and most people think they're pretty ugly. In fact, they're uglier than most other types of broadcast towers. That's why they're sometimes disguised as trees or other things, even though, let's be honest, that doesn't work very well.
It's the design of the cellular network that makes these towers so ugly. They can't be effectively hidden, because cell towers work best when there's nothing between them and your phone. You can't hide a cell tower inside a building or bury it in the ground. You really don't want it surrounded by other broadcasting equipment if you can avoid it. This tower has to be in the middle of a large open field. That's why cell towers disguised as trees look silly...there are no real trees nearby.
You can't disguise the difference in how they look
You'll also notice that while other types of broadcast towers are basically vertically pointing upwards, cell towers have all sorts of white boxes, domes, and things that look like big drums attached to them. This is really unavoidable for a number of reasons. First, cell towers have several functions, with a transmitter and receiver for each frequency used by each carrier, and these usually have to be in separate packages. Also, those giant white drums are microwave links that connect to your phone connection. They're necessary if you're not going to run trunk lines to the tower, which can be very expensive over long distances.
Also remember that a cell tower can serve thousands of customers at once, and each customer has their own connection to the tower. Some equipment can be consolidated, but there's no way around having multiple devices, and there's no way around needing to space them out a certain distance so they don't interfere with each other.
Very ugly
It's precisely because cell towers are so ugly that they're kept out of residential areas that increasingly need them. There are options, like microcells, which cover smaller areas but are only about the size of a summer camp suitcase, and improvements in efficiency can make those larger cellular transceivers even smaller. The latest generation of 5G towers are much smaller because they cover a much smaller area. That's the nature of 5G technology. Still, if you really want to blanket an area with cell signal, you'll need a big tower, built in the middle of an open field or high up on a hill.
But in reality, while cell towers are ugly, they're a necessity. More importantly, they're safe. In fact, the uglier the tower, the safer it is. Mounting the broadcasting equipment as high as possible reduces the amount of RF energy that reaches people on the ground, and while there's no evidence that cell phone broadcasts harm people, it's not a bad idea to stay as far away from heavy broadcast sites as possible. It's also worth mentioning that cell towers don't necessarily use more power than the average home, so unlike poles that carry power lines, they're not as dangerous if a storm hits. I mean, you should stay away from downed power lines, but unlike high voltage wires with transformers and the like, cell towers are pretty harmless.
So, guys, cell towers are ugly, but they're not harmful to the environment. They don't emit bad odors or attract the attention of animals. They're just ugly. Sometimes, you just have to live with the ugliness.
