i can speak from first-hand experience as a native san franciscan.
our local government is so corrupt?and unless you grease the palms of city hall, you'll never get anything done. there was (and still is) an abandoned building (part of it was a theater) on divisadero street several years ago. the owner/developer wanted to put condos in. a neighborhood group wanted to preserve all or at least part of the original structure. they finally reached a compromise with one person from this group holding out. even the local supervisor told them to take the deal. the city had to deny the developer. apparently, this guy wanted the developer to create a living space for him?after the developer had made all these concessions.
san francisco city government is a real joke. and beware, gavin newsom is at the head of it all. he may very well be your next lt. governor if californian's don't wise up. the alternative really sucks, too, so i think we're royally screwed.
What a troll.
Poor real estate developers. They're so victimized and it's the big bad single individuals that are the real baddies.
Way to speak truth to power.
Can't imagine why anyone would want to preserve the way our city looks.
Maybe all of those old victorians with aluminum siding from the 60s and 70s, and all those cheap, squared-off stuccos apartment buildings from the 50s and 60s are a clue...
Well, I use my iPhone in Dallas and I can reproduce a cell-tower hand-off problem 100% where the phone ALWAYS drops a call, shows 0 bars and right after the call is dropped, it climbs back to 5 bars.
No matter how I hold it (iP4) and it also always happened with my old 3G.
So regardless of the 3-week speedy Texas tower additions, the phone has a glitch switching between some towers...
Dude, you do understand that Apple does not have any pending requests for cell towers? Anywhere, in any city in the world. You know why? Because they are not in the business of providing cell service. Call your supervisor and ask what towers are proposed for your neighborhood and what is the holdup.
SF is the land of special interests and left-wing-looney-lobbyists. 3 years is probably optimistic. It is the most dysfunctional city I've ever seen in a developed nation. And, for what it is worth, I can confirm that there are most certainly dead spots all over, not just for ATT.
I almost never make posts on Apple sites that even touch on politics, but I'm so moved in this case.....
Quote:
Originally Posted by noexpectations
I live near Chicago. Many cell phone providers collaborated and decided to share a new tower. It took over 2 years for the local politicians to agree to it and in order for it to get approved, the tower had to be seamlessly integrated into an existing church steeple. They literally had to build a giant, tall brick tower, fill it internally with antennas, and top it with a cross.
Amazing. Now I know why my cell phone bill is so high.
Just wait. If this is what happens on a local gov't level when the save-us-from-ourselves class runs things, imagine how long it will take for the feds to approve a new life-saving procedure under the thousands of pages of O-Care legalese and the umpteen zillion unlegislated policies that will be generated by legions of administrators.
I have seen the future and it's a byzantine labrinyth run by a privileged political oligarchy in league with too big to fail donors.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss
Insert generic San Francisco bashing here ___________.
I see I am too late.
Yep. You are too late. A beautiful place, lots of interesting folks, but SF began turning itself into a joke decades ago. Too bad it's not funny.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aaarrrgggh
The cell phone companies are taking the wrong approach. They need to push micro and pico-cell sites in buildings and on street lights that cover a radius of 100m or less. Traditional tower installations are a lost cause; there isn't the spectrum to heavily centralize the infrastructure.
For San Francisco, that would be a worst-case total of 4,000 pole-top towers... at a cost of less than $10k per tower. Triple that to cover the SF factor, but you are still coming out pretty far ahead. Ricochet was able to do it for higher power boxes twelve years ago...
If you're right, right on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mac_dog
i can speak from first-hand experience as a native san franciscan.
our local government is so corrupt—and unless you grease the palms of city hall, you'll never get anything done.
All the latest PC nostrums and corruption too (and yes SF has at least its share). Does it get any better?
I almost never make posts on Apple sites that even touch on politics, but I'm so moved in this case.....
Just wait. If this is what happens on a local gov't level when the save-us-from-ourselves class runs things, imagine how long it will take for the feds to approve a new life-saving procedure under the thousands of pages of O-Care legalese and the umpteen zillion unlegislated policies that will be generated by legions of administrators.
I have seen the future and it's a byzantine labrinyth run by a privileged political oligarchy in league with too big to fail donors.
Yep. You are too late. A beautiful place, lots of interesting folks, but SF began turning itself into a joke decades ago. Too bad it's not funny.
If you're right, right on.
All the latest PC nostrums and corruption too (and yes SF has at least its share). Does it get any better?
There are reasons it's still a beautiful place and not a place that's nothing but fast food joints, big box stores and hills crowded with nothing but cell towers and buildlings that went up in 6 months and look like they were designed in 6 minutes.
Gee, I can't imagine how we San Franciscans ever avoided that fate....
You're an anti-liberal doofus who picks an end and then seeks a means to justify it.
San Francisco will find a way to make it work. It always has. It may take longer, it will cost more money, but it will protect the beauty of the City and the environment and probably set a few precedents along the way.
Burying cable and electrical wires underground is far more expensive than running then across poles down every street but most places do underground these days anyway.
Sometimes the long term is more important than immediate gratification and sometimes the better solution is not to pave paradise.
SF is the land of special interests and left-wing-looney-lobbyists. 3 years is probably optimistic. It is the most dysfunctional city I've ever seen in a developed nation. And, for what it is worth, I can confirm that there are most certainly dead spots all over, not just for ATT.
San Francisco is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and most people who live in the city CHOOSE to live here and love living here and are happy to live here.
We set the course for our own future and every place has its share of dysfunction.
We have different priorities than most places and Silicon Valley has a HUGE chip on its shoulder about the City forever because it's a boring, featureless beige landscape where one municipality blends into the next.
IDK if they are called micro-cell towers, but the providers have been placing small cell antennas on buildings in urban areas for a long time. You still have to find suitable buildings to put them on.
It's not necessarily limited to buildings. Where I am the phone companies put micro cells in all kinds of things to give great reception and no complaints. Metal rubbish bins, benches, civic sculptures and other normal city facilities are all used and often paid for the phone companies to put their gear in. No one even notices these things, because there's no sign of these things serving a dual role.
They use these in combination with bigger antennas hanging off a range of buildings and the days of public complaints about it are long, long gone.
There are reasons it's still a beautiful place and not a place that's nothing but fast food joints, big box stores and hills crowded with nothing but cell towers and buildlings that went up in 6 months and look like they were designed in 6 minutes.
Gee, I can't imagine how we San Franciscans ever avoided that fate....
You're an anti-liberal doofus who picks an end and then seeks a means to justify it.
San Francisco will find a way to make it work. It always has. It may take longer, it will cost more money, but it will protect the beauty of the City and the environment and probably set a few precedents along the way.
Burying cable and electrical wires underground is far more expensive than running then across poles down every street but most places do underground these days anyway.
Sometimes the long term is more important than immediate gratification and sometimes the better solution is not to pave paradise.
Do you understand that sometimes when things take too much time and cost more money they may not happen at all? Companies have a finite amount of both and though they may not come out and criticize one city or another publicly they definitely lose interest and begin to ignore places that become nothing but a sinkhole of frustration and resources. Perhaps that's the outcome you might like.
Unfortunately for you, saying "San Francisco will make it work" appears to imply a belief that it's the city alone that can make it work. Whereas in reality it needs both the will of both the city and the companies which help serve it to achieve the goals that most citizens expect of their city.
LOL, the idea that politicians can ban whatever they want and it's engineers job to "just make it work anyway" might be nice but not realistic. There are only a limited way to do lots of things in this universe. e.g. In the whole universe of possibilities there is only 1 way we know of to make new human beings.
Lots of things are like this. Only a small number of cause and effect can make them happen. Banning is more dangerous than it would seem!
Reception here is so bad. AT&T has gone to court with the some of the homeowners association here, and still could not get one extra cell tower approval. Then it was put on the city ballot during the election, and it still failed to pass.
Some neighborhoods in California are impossible to get even a single cell tower installed, even on the freeway. Sometimes you wonder wether these local activists understand that neighborhoods belong to everyone. And just a few a mile in next city, cellphone reception is at optimum because there are several cell towers.
So the situation in San Francisco is not too bad compared to South Orange County, Ca.
Do the hills of san fran make the signal problem worse worse ??
I live in Texas and have for most of my life. How shall I put this? Uh, Texas and all of it's cities are ugly. Very, very few people here have any real appreciation or knowledge of design - whether it is phones or city planning. They like to pretend they care about their past, but they don't. Texas treats their cities and neighborhoods just like Los Angeles - they tear them down when they get old thus destroying any desirable character. So a cell tower is a non-issue. The community of Wimberly near Austin tried to stop a cell tower from going up and they failed miserably.
I admire communities that try to keep the charm, beauty and livable attributes of their surroundings intact. The only way to achieve this is through regulation. It might anger the pro development, big business types who don't care about anything but the size of their . . . um developments, but you know, who cares? I'd rather live in a nice place than have perfect cell reception. Of course I live in Texas, but I notice Mr. Jobs does not. He might like Texas because of it's lax regulations, but he would never live here.
I agree-I live in SF and I have lived all over the United States.... and ya know-SF is probably one of the most beautiful cities in the world... We are famous for our politics (good and bad), beatniks, hippies, and fags, our crooked street where you will most definitely feel straighter, the shrimp louie, alcatraz, cable cars etc.- But our voters don't like plastic bags, cigarettes at the pharmacy and i reckon antennae towers that would ruin the beauty of our neighborhoods that we try to preserve.
One of the problems in SF though is all of the BIG hills and lack of areas without residents living as much above business. So electromagnetic radiation is an issue. I read a report about a year and a half ago that stated that phone companies could lower the EMR emitted extremely safe levels by placing more smaller towers and every US cell provider has dismissed all the science regarding this and opts for the much more harmful larger towers.
Anyhow-I am babbling but heck I am sure happy I don't have to look at the rest of the country day to day-I'll take poor reception over strip malls and industrial wastelands, and house complexes - walmart - fast food - freshly mowed grass lawns in the dessert - and Lady effin' GAGA
If you want something in SF that benefits everyone, improves safety and increases the quality of life then you wait 3 years. But let a group of pervs file to be able to march around naked or hold a public S&M party and they'll probably walk out the door with permit in hand. Yep, I'd want to live there.
This is the first time San Francisco has been known to not fully embrace a few rods!
i got nuthin
I think what you were trying to say was that if AT&T made them look like big penises instead of banana trees, then the SF constituents would be all over the idea.
I see these by the freeway all the time. Who are they trying to fool really.... Does it make people happier if they see an antenna pretending to be a tree versus just an antenna.
It doesn't have to fool anyone except the idiot politicians. They can pretend that they're preserving the native beauty of the place - and not realize that everyone is laughing at them behind their backs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by God of Biscuits
San Francisco is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and most people who live in the city CHOOSE to live here and love living here and are happy to live here.
We set the course for our own future and every place has its share of dysfunction.
We have different priorities than most places and Silicon Valley has a HUGE chip on its shoulder about the City forever because it's a boring, featureless beige landscape where one municipality blends into the next..
I have no problem with that (or the person who posted something similar about Texas). The real problem is people who want everything and don't want to deal with the consequences.
If the people of San Francisco made a knowledgeable decision that they were not willing to have any more cell phone towers and that their phone reception would stink because of that choice, that's their choice to make.
Or, if they decided that they want cell phone coverage, but don't like the appearance of the towers so they'd hire an architect to work with the cell phone people to disguise the towers, that's OK.
Or, if they decide that they can live with those silly palm tree monstrosities, that's their choice.
Or, if they invest in technology to try to make it possible to have improved cell phone reception with existing tower, that would be a reasonable choice.
The problem is that they want great cell phone coverage and don't want to pay the price in any way. Like the people with their 6,000 square foot homes with 4 a/c units, home theatre, etc - but who won't vote for power plants in their state. Choices have consequences - and the sooner people learn that, the better.
Comments
i can speak from first-hand experience as a native san franciscan.
our local government is so corrupt?and unless you grease the palms of city hall, you'll never get anything done. there was (and still is) an abandoned building (part of it was a theater) on divisadero street several years ago. the owner/developer wanted to put condos in. a neighborhood group wanted to preserve all or at least part of the original structure. they finally reached a compromise with one person from this group holding out. even the local supervisor told them to take the deal. the city had to deny the developer. apparently, this guy wanted the developer to create a living space for him?after the developer had made all these concessions.
san francisco city government is a real joke. and beware, gavin newsom is at the head of it all. he may very well be your next lt. governor if californian's don't wise up. the alternative really sucks, too, so i think we're royally screwed.
What a troll.
Poor real estate developers. They're so victimized and it's the big bad single individuals that are the real baddies.
Way to speak truth to power.
Can't imagine why anyone would want to preserve the way our city looks.
Maybe all of those old victorians with aluminum siding from the 60s and 70s, and all those cheap, squared-off stuccos apartment buildings from the 50s and 60s are a clue...
This is San Francisco - ATT needs to make them look like banana HAMMOCKS, they would be approved in three HOURS!
sorry, couldn't resist!
OMG you're so...so....
idiotic.
No matter how I hold it (iP4) and it also always happened with my old 3G.
So regardless of the 3-week speedy Texas tower additions, the phone has a glitch switching between some towers...
Dude, you do understand that Apple does not have any pending requests for cell towers? Anywhere, in any city in the world. You know why? Because they are not in the business of providing cell service. Call your supervisor and ask what towers are proposed for your neighborhood and what is the holdup.
sorry, you lost me at "dude".
This is the first time San Francisco has been known to not fully embrace a few rods!
i got nuthin
No, that's funny.
What a troll..
Do you deny that SF local government isn't a mess? It's like NYC in the 80's, in a lot of ways.
SF is the land of special interests and left-wing-looney-lobbyists. 3 years is probably optimistic. It is the most dysfunctional city I've ever seen in a developed nation. And, for what it is worth, I can confirm that there are most certainly dead spots all over, not just for ATT.
I almost never make posts on Apple sites that even touch on politics, but I'm so moved in this case.....
I live near Chicago. Many cell phone providers collaborated and decided to share a new tower. It took over 2 years for the local politicians to agree to it and in order for it to get approved, the tower had to be seamlessly integrated into an existing church steeple. They literally had to build a giant, tall brick tower, fill it internally with antennas, and top it with a cross.
Amazing. Now I know why my cell phone bill is so high.
Just wait. If this is what happens on a local gov't level when the save-us-from-ourselves class runs things, imagine how long it will take for the feds to approve a new life-saving procedure under the thousands of pages of O-Care legalese and the umpteen zillion unlegislated policies that will be generated by legions of administrators.
I have seen the future and it's a byzantine labrinyth run by a privileged political oligarchy in league with too big to fail donors.
Insert generic San Francisco bashing here ___________.
I see I am too late.
Yep. You are too late. A beautiful place, lots of interesting folks, but SF began turning itself into a joke decades ago. Too bad it's not funny.
The cell phone companies are taking the wrong approach. They need to push micro and pico-cell sites in buildings and on street lights that cover a radius of 100m or less. Traditional tower installations are a lost cause; there isn't the spectrum to heavily centralize the infrastructure.
For San Francisco, that would be a worst-case total of 4,000 pole-top towers... at a cost of less than $10k per tower. Triple that to cover the SF factor, but you are still coming out pretty far ahead. Ricochet was able to do it for higher power boxes twelve years ago...
If you're right, right on.
i can speak from first-hand experience as a native san franciscan.
our local government is so corrupt—and unless you grease the palms of city hall, you'll never get anything done.
All the latest PC nostrums and corruption too (and yes SF has at least its share). Does it get any better?
I almost never make posts on Apple sites that even touch on politics, but I'm so moved in this case.....
Just wait. If this is what happens on a local gov't level when the save-us-from-ourselves class runs things, imagine how long it will take for the feds to approve a new life-saving procedure under the thousands of pages of O-Care legalese and the umpteen zillion unlegislated policies that will be generated by legions of administrators.
I have seen the future and it's a byzantine labrinyth run by a privileged political oligarchy in league with too big to fail donors.
Yep. You are too late. A beautiful place, lots of interesting folks, but SF began turning itself into a joke decades ago. Too bad it's not funny.
If you're right, right on.
All the latest PC nostrums and corruption too (and yes SF has at least its share). Does it get any better?
There are reasons it's still a beautiful place and not a place that's nothing but fast food joints, big box stores and hills crowded with nothing but cell towers and buildlings that went up in 6 months and look like they were designed in 6 minutes.
Gee, I can't imagine how we San Franciscans ever avoided that fate....
You're an anti-liberal doofus who picks an end and then seeks a means to justify it.
San Francisco will find a way to make it work. It always has. It may take longer, it will cost more money, but it will protect the beauty of the City and the environment and probably set a few precedents along the way.
Burying cable and electrical wires underground is far more expensive than running then across poles down every street but most places do underground these days anyway.
Sometimes the long term is more important than immediate gratification and sometimes the better solution is not to pave paradise.
SF is the land of special interests and left-wing-looney-lobbyists. 3 years is probably optimistic. It is the most dysfunctional city I've ever seen in a developed nation. And, for what it is worth, I can confirm that there are most certainly dead spots all over, not just for ATT.
San Francisco is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and most people who live in the city CHOOSE to live here and love living here and are happy to live here.
We set the course for our own future and every place has its share of dysfunction.
We have different priorities than most places and Silicon Valley has a HUGE chip on its shoulder about the City forever because it's a boring, featureless beige landscape where one municipality blends into the next.
Pity.
IDK if they are called micro-cell towers, but the providers have been placing small cell antennas on buildings in urban areas for a long time. You still have to find suitable buildings to put them on.
It's not necessarily limited to buildings. Where I am the phone companies put micro cells in all kinds of things to give great reception and no complaints. Metal rubbish bins, benches, civic sculptures and other normal city facilities are all used and often paid for the phone companies to put their gear in. No one even notices these things, because there's no sign of these things serving a dual role.
They use these in combination with bigger antennas hanging off a range of buildings and the days of public complaints about it are long, long gone.
There are reasons it's still a beautiful place and not a place that's nothing but fast food joints, big box stores and hills crowded with nothing but cell towers and buildlings that went up in 6 months and look like they were designed in 6 minutes.
Gee, I can't imagine how we San Franciscans ever avoided that fate....
You're an anti-liberal doofus who picks an end and then seeks a means to justify it.
San Francisco will find a way to make it work. It always has. It may take longer, it will cost more money, but it will protect the beauty of the City and the environment and probably set a few precedents along the way.
Burying cable and electrical wires underground is far more expensive than running then across poles down every street but most places do underground these days anyway.
Sometimes the long term is more important than immediate gratification and sometimes the better solution is not to pave paradise.
Do you understand that sometimes when things take too much time and cost more money they may not happen at all? Companies have a finite amount of both and though they may not come out and criticize one city or another publicly they definitely lose interest and begin to ignore places that become nothing but a sinkhole of frustration and resources. Perhaps that's the outcome you might like.
Unfortunately for you, saying "San Francisco will make it work" appears to imply a belief that it's the city alone that can make it work. Whereas in reality it needs both the will of both the city and the companies which help serve it to achieve the goals that most citizens expect of their city.
Lots of things are like this. Only a small number of cause and effect can make them happen. Banning is more dangerous than it would seem!
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/vonstringcaldinkal
Reception here is so bad. AT&T has gone to court with the some of the homeowners association here, and still could not get one extra cell tower approval. Then it was put on the city ballot during the election, and it still failed to pass.
Some neighborhoods in California are impossible to get even a single cell tower installed, even on the freeway. Sometimes you wonder wether these local activists understand that neighborhoods belong to everyone. And just a few a mile in next city, cellphone reception is at optimum because there are several cell towers.
So the situation in San Francisco is not too bad compared to South Orange County, Ca.
Do the hills of san fran make the signal problem worse worse ??
I live in Texas and have for most of my life. How shall I put this? Uh, Texas and all of it's cities are ugly. Very, very few people here have any real appreciation or knowledge of design - whether it is phones or city planning. They like to pretend they care about their past, but they don't. Texas treats their cities and neighborhoods just like Los Angeles - they tear them down when they get old thus destroying any desirable character. So a cell tower is a non-issue. The community of Wimberly near Austin tried to stop a cell tower from going up and they failed miserably.
I admire communities that try to keep the charm, beauty and livable attributes of their surroundings intact. The only way to achieve this is through regulation. It might anger the pro development, big business types who don't care about anything but the size of their . . . um developments, but you know, who cares? I'd rather live in a nice place than have perfect cell reception. Of course I live in Texas, but I notice Mr. Jobs does not. He might like Texas because of it's lax regulations, but he would never live here.
I agree-I live in SF and I have lived all over the United States.... and ya know-SF is probably one of the most beautiful cities in the world... We are famous for our politics (good and bad), beatniks, hippies, and fags, our crooked street where you will most definitely feel straighter, the shrimp louie, alcatraz, cable cars etc.- But our voters don't like plastic bags, cigarettes at the pharmacy and i reckon antennae towers that would ruin the beauty of our neighborhoods that we try to preserve.
One of the problems in SF though is all of the BIG hills and lack of areas without residents living as much above business. So electromagnetic radiation is an issue. I read a report about a year and a half ago that stated that phone companies could lower the EMR emitted extremely safe levels by placing more smaller towers and every US cell provider has dismissed all the science regarding this and opts for the much more harmful larger towers.
Anyhow-I am babbling but heck I am sure happy I don't have to look at the rest of the country day to day-I'll take poor reception over strip malls and industrial wastelands, and house complexes - walmart - fast food - freshly mowed grass lawns in the dessert - and Lady effin' GAGA
ANY DAY!!
This is the first time San Francisco has been known to not fully embrace a few rods!
i got nuthin
I think what you were trying to say was that if AT&T made them look like big penises instead of banana trees, then the SF constituents would be all over the idea.
I see these by the freeway all the time. Who are they trying to fool really.... Does it make people happier if they see an antenna pretending to be a tree versus just an antenna.
It doesn't have to fool anyone except the idiot politicians. They can pretend that they're preserving the native beauty of the place - and not realize that everyone is laughing at them behind their backs.
San Francisco is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and most people who live in the city CHOOSE to live here and love living here and are happy to live here.
We set the course for our own future and every place has its share of dysfunction.
We have different priorities than most places and Silicon Valley has a HUGE chip on its shoulder about the City forever because it's a boring, featureless beige landscape where one municipality blends into the next..
I have no problem with that (or the person who posted something similar about Texas). The real problem is people who want everything and don't want to deal with the consequences.
If the people of San Francisco made a knowledgeable decision that they were not willing to have any more cell phone towers and that their phone reception would stink because of that choice, that's their choice to make.
Or, if they decided that they want cell phone coverage, but don't like the appearance of the towers so they'd hire an architect to work with the cell phone people to disguise the towers, that's OK.
Or, if they decide that they can live with those silly palm tree monstrosities, that's their choice.
Or, if they invest in technology to try to make it possible to have improved cell phone reception with existing tower, that would be a reasonable choice.
The problem is that they want great cell phone coverage and don't want to pay the price in any way. Like the people with their 6,000 square foot homes with 4 a/c units, home theatre, etc - but who won't vote for power plants in their state. Choices have consequences - and the sooner people learn that, the better.