Above: Cell towers. Photo by MrFotos/DepositPhotos.

I awoke one morning to see some email from the property manager of our residential community stating that TSTT would beginning works on two cell towers within our community. Not one, mind you, but two. There was no warning, no conversation, just an email stating that works would be beginning.

I sighed. At first, I didn’t realize where the towers would be placed until I’d had enough coffee and enough people discussing it in the WhatsApp chats had me realize that I’d be staring at one with my morning coffee should works actually start when the calendar struck the date.

A few people were happy but they would not be gaining the view. One of my neighbours, whose husband has a pacemaker, was concerned about health issues. Another neighbour was concerned about health issues because of her newborn, another about her soon to be born. Recent issues in the media about towers highlighted the concerns, and I recall seeing the same issues in the U.S. a few decades ago and even now.

Letters from doctors about cell towers were sent around WhatsApp claiming health concerns with them, which I read with some dismay – I had thought that the issue had been settled, but apparently I was wrong.

This time, my perspective is necessarily different. This time, I am not a technological nomad, going where my skills were wanted or needed – this time, I am invested and will not be leaving the area soon. This time, this is my permanent home. This time, I had bought into a community that now decided some should bear the unsightly burden. Until today, you have never read the a sentence containing the phrase, “As beautiful as a cell tower.” There’s a reason.

This is an issue within the community involving Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago, Ltd (TSTT), and the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (TATT) and at least 2 other acronyms, and therefore I won’t write about the specifics of that yet as I am necessarily involved in since it directly impacts me.

I will write about what people need to know since in researching it, I see the recent issues with Balmain resident concerns regarding a cell tower, as well as even the pulling down of a tower in Bates Trace.

There is a bigger picture. There always is.

Digital Divide

The premise for cell towers proliferation in Trinidad and Tobago is about the Digital Divide. The Digital Divide is about the access to information which in our global society is definitely a need, and some have tried at the World Summit for Information Society level as a human right. Mind you, on the global scale, and even local, dependable water and electricity are more pressing priorities, but access to information, to knowledge, and the ability to handle commerce electronically is certainly a need and has been underlined by our ongoing pandemic of Covid-19.

Having been involved with Digital Divide issues from the days of the Digital Divide Network, from the meta level of the World Summit of Information Society in 2003 to regional efforts in Latin America and the Caribbean, such as CARDICIS, I will say that not only is the Digital Divide issue is real, it should be a priority in Trinidad and Tobago as it is in many other nations.

This is why the Universal Service Framework For Telecommunications Services In Trinidad and Tobago mentions it in section 1.1, “The Importance of Universal Service” (page 5 in the document).

While some people take the ability to access these services for granted, not everyone has the opportunity to share the experience due to the existing digital divide.

This Universal Service Framework seeks to institute regulatory mechanisms that would facilitate bridging the gap between those who have access to telecommunications services and those who do not in Trinidad and Tobago…”

Throughout the document, with the final version published in June 2012, the spirit of assuring that everyone in Trinidad and Tobago has access to the broadband. This is a clear position to assure that the digital divide is decreased significantly, something of great import in just about every aspect of being a human being in an interconnected global network.

Mobile communication is an important part of this, and so, we come back to cell towers. To meet these goals of penetration in Trinidad and Tobago, telecommunications service providers are pushing to get that to happen. TATT has a list of areas where the access gap is a priority within Trinidad and Tobago to that end, prioritizing projects that will help serve those communities.

To say this is important would be an understatement. Yet, there are other things that are also important and have to be balanced, or we’d all be staring at cell towers.

The Balance

Towers require land, electricity and their own connection to data, be it directly through a SIP trunk or simply repeating signal from other towers. As I explained it recently, our world is a bit like a pond, and each tower is where stones are dropped occasionally to send ripples of connectivity to everyone.

To carry that metaphor forward, the larger the stone, the bigger the ripples. This would be the power of the tower, and placement is important because, as any idle person who has thrown pebbles into ponds knows, other things can obstruct or alter the ripples. Buildings, natural hills, and yes, other ripples. Thus, where the rocks are dropped, where the cell towers are placed, is important to assure maximum availability to people. Anyone who has had to deal with WiFi issues within their homes is familiar with the problems on a smaller scale.

Because of this, cell towers do show up where we can see them. In that regard, they’re a necessary evil. This is sometimes offset by land owners being compensated by the particular provider, it is sometimes offset by insistent need, and sometimes better solutions can be found to assure better service within a building, where internal repeaters can assure connectivity without being a visual nuisance.

People have health concerns about cell towers, cell phones, and all manner of wireless connectivity. If you go to websites, you see a fairly consistent wording of, “No studies have shown…” which is understandable, but they don’t guarantee safety. Why is that?

A study on these sorts of things is complicated and would have to be lengthy to include long term effects of exposure. How do you measure effects of long term exposure? The study would take decades, and how long have we had cell towers around the globe? ‘Not long enough’ is the short answer

Then when you factor in genetics and other things exposed to, it’s pretty clear that some very knowledgeable and intelligent people would need to be funded with money that no one seems to have, and if it were done fully, we’d likely need a control group with no exposure at all with the matching genetics, etc, etc. Our attempts to decrease the digital divide are eroding our ability to have a control group.

Thus while health concerns are generally dismissed out of hand, just because we don’t know doesn’t mean it isn’t there. To some staring at the ocean, it’s a wonderful place to swim, to others, the worry of something taking a bite out of them makes it less pleasant. The reality is somewhere in between, and I think it’s fair to say that the same can be said of cell towers.

TATT tests cell towers for radiation, at least some annually, and has standards for equipment power that they seem to be keeping an eye on, as is their mandate. With two major providers, Digicel and bMobile (TSTT) who for some peculiar reason do not share infrastructure, they’re dealing with competitors who are playing chess on a shrinking board, competing to meet their mandates. I imagine it’s not an easy task.

Because of all of this, there is a process to putting cell towers. TATT has documentation you can glean through on their website regarding all of this, including some parts of their position and procedures for site approvals to Town and Country Planning Division regarding telecommunications structures.

But what does it mean?

The beauty of a cell tower is largely in the eye of the beholder. Cell towers are not the only option for every problem, and connectivity issues with phones and other devices can be problematic because of carrier issues, electrical power to towers, our devices themselves and even how we hold them. There is no exact answer, but understanding the problem trying to be solved is imperative. Who has a problem? What sort of problems?

Like any solution, the pros and cons must be weighed. We must progress and progress faster than the more developed do to catch up with them, and yet, the cost of the progress must also be balanced by other aspects, our solutions tailored to the context of problems.

As far as the situation my community is dealing with, I look forward to seeing how the balance is struck

About the author

Taran Rampersad has over three decades of experience working with technology, the majority of which was as a software engineer.

He is a published author on virtual worlds and was part of the team of writers at WorldChanging.com that won the Utne Award and an outspoken advocate of simplifying processes and bending technology’s use to society’s needs.

His volunteer work related to technology and disasters has been mentioned by the media (BBC), and is one of the plank-owners of combining culture with ICT in the Caribbean (ICT) through CARDICIS and has volunteered time towards those ends.

As an amateur photographer, he has been published in educational books, magazines, websites and NASA’s ‘Sensing The Planet’. These days, he’s focusing more on his writing and technology experiments. Feel free to contact him through Facebook Messenger.