Tuesday, October 20, 2015 Volume 3 | Issue 205

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Robert Hormats Elected to AMT Board of Directors American Tower Corporation has voted former U.S. State Department official and Goldman Sachs veteran Robert Hormats to its board of directors. The ballots were cast Thursday (October 15) and the announcement was made in a company issued press release issued yesterday (October 19) that was filed with the SEC. Hormats will serve until the next annual meeting or until a successor is qualified and elected, the company said.

Born in Baltimore 72 years ago, Hormats currently serves as vice chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., a strategic international consulting firm. He previously served as Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment. Hormats is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Investment Committee of Tiedemann Wealth Management.

“Throughout his career, Bob has played a leading role in addressing important foreign policy, financial market, and global business issues,” James Taiclet, chairman, president and chief executive officer of American Tower, said. “He will bring a wealth of direct experience and expertise to our most important strategic and capital markets initiatives as we continue to grow our company both in the U.S. and across our international markets.”

Hormats is an advocate of enhancing intelligence capabilities, modernizing military equipment and spending more money on preparing first-responders like firemen and emergency medical technicians for crises, according to Wikipedia. He worries that future presidential administrations will spend less than they should on homeland security because to do so will require raising taxes or cutting non-defense programs.

American Tower, which trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol ATM, closed yesterday up slightly at $96.79.

AT&T Expands Coverage North of Miami AT&T continues to beef up its wireless service in Doral, a city just northwest of Miami, with the activation of a new cell site on NW 25 Street. It is the fifth new site to be activated since the beginning of the year, reports the Doral Community News. Other cell sites are in North Miami Beach, Hialeah, South Beach and Coral Gables. All totaled, AT&T has turned on eight new cell sites this year in South Florida and improved nearly 100 others to improve mobile device service, investing nearly $875 million in its networks in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties since 2012.

Tustin, MI, Woman Is One of an Elite Group Tammy Stoner, owner of Wind Power Services LLC, recently was featured on northern Michigan’s CBS TV affiliates, WWTV/WWUP, as having a unique skill— tower climbing. Stoner is both a tower climber and a teacher of the skill and offers a class that brings in students from all over the world. She teaches them a unique skill that very few people in the state are certified to teach but that is needed in several lines of work. Stoner, who started her business in 2002, provides one of about 15 federally certified tower-climbing training sites in the U.S., the station’s newscasts reported. Her passion for windmills as a child has been the driving force to becoming one of only two certified wind site assessors in the state of Michigan, according to her website.

As a certified instructor for tower climbing safety and rescue, Stoner is able to combine her passion for wind energy with a fascination for steel structures into performing a job that she truly enjoys doing.

She has successfully completed courses in tower construction, tower climbing safety and rescue, wind systems repair and maintenance, wind site assessor training, instructor for tower climbing safety and rescue certification and more. She also is an Osceola, MI, county commissioner. She originally took a tower-climbing class so she could work with wind energy.

Stoner lives in LeRoy, MI with her husband and daughter. When not diligently performing her duties as a wife, mother, business owner, county commissioner and community volunteer you will find her wandering in the woods bonding with nature.

Stoner never thought she'd end up teaching others how to use the skills. She usually teaches four to 12 students in a class and has been climbing towers for 10 years and teaching for five.

“I go home after a class and I may have played a role in saving somebody's life, and I get that numerous times. 'Oh geez, I didn't know that. Oh geez, I've been doing this without hooking off,'” Stoner, who's from Tustin, told the television outlets.

Stoner is the curriculum director and senior instructor at Vertical Safety Solutions and teaches about one class a month drawing in students from all over the world who need the skill for their trades. Once they reach their job they are either a communication tech in cellphone, wireless tech in wireless Internet, HAM operators or wind turbine technicians. People who climb towers can be in the air for as long as 14 hours, Stoner said, so gear like a safety restraint can help people take breaks when needed. She intends to start offering certification for people who inspect climbing gear next year.

While Stoner is unfazed by climbing into the clouds, she told Inside Towers “I am scared of ladders.” She also acknowledged that she cannot get her husband, Nevin, to climb with her. “He stays on the ground.”

Analyst Jeff Kagan Answers Sprint Speculation Analysts never have all the answers, but they often have more insight into a company’s goals and direction than other observers. In an opinion piece published in RCRWireless on Monday, wireless analyst and consultant Jeff Kagan said Sprint “currently has plenty of wireless spectrum. The carrier got it from a variety of places in the last several years, including its Clearwire acquisition.” He added that Sprint is “still in the recovery and rebuilding mode.” He believes the company must continue to focus on the recovery and rebuild, and keep customers happy today.” He believes Sprint has done “quite a good job” of improving quality and customer satisfaction in many market areas and it doesn’t need to get bogged down in sorting out new spectrum rather focus on putting to work the spectrum it already owns.

“I think Sprint made the right call. Bottom line, a carrier needs to remain relevant and needs to continue to build market share,” Kagan said. “Sprint can do this by focusing on continuing to improve the customer experience, which is done by focusing on the network and customer satisfaction, not by buying more spectrum they won’t need for years.”

He predicted that over the next few years, “Sprint will be focused on recovery and growth. If this continues, I think this decision will be recognized as the right call.”

New Technology Harvests Energy from Radio Frequency Waves By Michelle Choi, Lease Advisors British startup, Drayson Technologies, has developed new technology called Freevolt that harvests unused, ambient radio frequency waves from cell towers and radio antennas. These waves are then converted into small amounts of usable energy suitable for low-power devices like smart house sensors and wearables. For many years, researchers had attempted this method, but struggled with the low amount of energy available for harvest. The efficiency of the rectifier component responsible for the transformation of energy into electric current presented an additional hurdle. Drayson Technologies has since been able to create a multi-band antenna with access to a broad range of bands and an optimized power management system to manage the collected energy.

When mobile devices engage in transmission, not all of the energy is received or used, and nanowatts of energy go to waste. Wireless networks provide radio frequency transmissions and with the uptrend of data demand, the available waves in the air are expected to increase, thus increasing the capabilities of Freevolt. Carriers and network providers spend billions of dollars in spectrum auctions and could demand a fee for the usage of their networks for energy collection. Despite this, Drayson has expressed confidence that there is no legal basis for the issue, stating that they do not anticipate problems with network providers.

This kind of technology is ideal for small devices that require low power and frequent charging like smartwatches, smart house sensors, and small accessories. The first product to use Freevolt is a personal air quality sensor tag that relays information to a smartphone. Thanks to Freevolt, it is now constantly charged via radio frequency waves. The potential applications of this technology don’t stop with small devices—a larger version with higher energy collection and conversion capacity could be on the way. As more bands of spectrum are released and consumers increasingly rely on their mobile devices, the technology could be making its way into more products.

Ganzi, Peterson, Reed Lead All-Star Pack of HetNet Expo 2015 Keynoters Telecommunications industry pioneer and Digital Bridge Holdings Co-Founder and CEO Marc Ganzi; Boingo Holdings Chief Technology Officer Derek Peterson; and Verizon Communications GP/Entertainment and Tech Policy Eric Reed are among the industry intelligentsia taking the stage at HetNetExpo2015, October 27-28 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. Others include Nokia Networks VP/Services Don Hewitt and consultant Chetan Sharma. It’s the second annual expo produced by the Wireless Infrastructure Association and is expected to draw a diverse audience of property owners and managers who will discuss ways to achieve consistent mobile coverage throughout their venues.

“This year’s HetNet Expo will bring together leaders throughout the wireless ecosystem. PCIA and our HetNet Forum play a vital role in helping to facilitate collaboration and understanding between seemingly disparate parties, so that the industry can continue to deploy these much needed solutions,” PCIA President and CEO Jonathan Adelstein said.

Green Bay Community To Get Unwanted 195’ Verizon Tower Opponents of cell tower construction often cite deteriorating property values as an argument to stall or stop the creation of more towers. Although the validity of that argument still is unknown, residents of Green Bay’s Wilder Park community believe it will adversely alter their home values after a 195-foot cell tower is built in their neighborhood.

The idea is for the tower to be built on the property of Northeastern Wisconsin Lutheran High School. Although the amount of money involved is unknown at this time, the lease will be for 50 years. Resident Patrick Boex also is worried the tower will block future views of the night sky. He told the Green Bay Press Gazette: “(A few) weeks ago, we were watching the blood moon come up (for the lunar eclipse). Well, now, we’ll have a cell phone tower (to look at).”

The school board already approved of the tower construction and just recently informed residents of their plans.

The state of Wisconsin is lenient in regard to zoning for new communications towers. According to Paul Neumeyer, Green Bay’s senior city planner, “Zoning, a lot of times, is setbacks and heights and saying what you can’t do. Now, the legislation is, like, we can’t do anything, really. We get to look at it, but there’s not much we can say or do about it from a regulatory standpoint.”

Instead, permit requests do not go through the city council for debates or hearings. By law, permits now only require staff approval.

Residents are frustrated that they do not have a say on future elements of their community.Although there is little they can do besides encouraging the school board to reverse its decision, residents in the area still are working to voice their disapproval and concerns over the tower. Few details are known about the tower. Verizon will be leasing it from school and church, but the building contractor still is unknown.

Verizon May Move Springfield, Oregon Cell Tower The dispute between Verizon and the local Relief Nursery over a 90-foot-tall cellular tower proposal may be close to ending, says the Eugene, Oregon-based Register-Guard.

The city council in July approved the current proposed location, which was on property 50 feet to the south of the Relief Nursery’s property line and playground. However, the non-profit organization that operates an early childhood program and preschool argued that the tower posed too many risks being so close to children, including falling, a potential fire or exposure to electromagnetic radiation.

In August, the Relief Nursery “filed notice of its intent to appeal to the state Land Use Board of Appeals,” according to the Register-Guard.

Verizon has agreed to move the tower, however the new proposed location is 105 feet from the Mount Vernon Elementary School’s eastern property line and 260 feet from the nearest home. Verizon said that “the tower is needed as increasing data use has exhausted the capacity from available bandwidth in the area.” Customers may have to wait, as construction can’t begin until the appeal is settled.

Now it’s up to the city planning commission, which will hold a public hearing Tuesday. It is unclear on if a final decision will be made at the hearing.

Chief Financial Officer Greater Boston Global Recruiters Network of Blackhawk

If you are interested in having your company profile in Inside Towers, please email us. We'll be happy to set up an interview free of charge.

Please contact one of our specialists for advertising opportunities, Classifieds, editorial inquiries, or any other questions. Editor: Jeffrey Yorke Contributing Writers: Alyssa Stahr, Ben Horvath, Braden Hall, Catherine Wysoczanski, Eleanor Snite, and Jay Munson. Advertising: Phil Cook Advertising: Drew Simpson Tower-Pro.com: Cara Aston

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