“Why Let the Corporations Decide?” – San Francisco Supervisors Deny T-Mobile Permit on Appeal 1

Residents of San Francisco’s Sunset District raised concerns about cell site proliferation in the city and succeeded on appeal against a T-Mobile wireless permit in an 11-0 Board of Supervisors vote May 18.

This was the first cell antenna appeal to reach the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in at least 4 years, but similar controversies are now pending all over the city. At Tuesday’s hearing, citizens from other districts spoke in support of the appeal and called attention to the proliferation of cell sites in neighborhoods known for their views. The presiding chair finally had to remind the audience that standing rules prohibited clapping, as several of the speakers elicited applause. Among them:

Jerry Risk –

T-Mobile is also planning on building the same thing in a church that’s about 300 yards from where we live…I think there’s something inherently wrong with this discussion. This is called the Planning Commission. That means you plan things. You wouldn’t allow Standard Oil to build 5 or 8 filling stations in a block. You wouldn’t allow music stores, maybe six of them in a row…How many more do you need before you people take charge? I think that somehow it shouldn’t be the corporations that decide how many and where they want to put things. I think this is something for us to decide, for you to decide. We voted for you to do the job, and I think that you should say “Wait a minute, this is enough” … “I don’t think they need six of them here, I think they could use just one or two.” And you can plan the whole thing out for our city…Why let the corporations decide? Because they’re in competition with one another, they’ll put six here, eight there, twenty there!

Rob Geller –

[In] District 8, we are presently contending with a proposed, similarly poorly sited wireless facility. Here’s one example of why these things are incompatible and inappropriate for our neighborhoods… These things actually catch fire pretty easily…These things are industrial facilities that do not belong in predominantly residential neighborhoods. This is polarizing and discomforting many people around the city. It really needs to be addressed. I strongly urge you to convene hearings to look into the sudden proliferation of such wireless facilities in our neighborhoods and the necessity for them. We can’t just take T-Mobile’s words that they are necessary; we really need stronger standards.

Steve Krolik –

The people of San Francisco know what’s best for our neighborhood. How can a transnational corporation know what’s best? T-Mobile drifts from building to building. I ask you for your support of the appeal so that the people of San Francisco can address the issues. They know what’s best for their neighborhoods, T-Mobile does not.

Doug Loranger –

Take a very close look at whatever materials T-Mobile submitted to support this facility. My guess is that it will show that there is no need in the neighborhood for this facility. Why is T-Mobile going around the whole city trying to install cell sites when their customers are already well served in San Francisco? I submitted two articles that explain why this is happening…[They are] driven by speculative attempts to gain market share vis-a-vis their competitors….What goes unstated in these two articles is what T-Mobile hopes to accomplish – that is by lowering their prices, they assume that thousands of customers from their competitors AT&T and Verizon will flock to T-Mobile – at that point all these new sites with this new capacity will then be necessary if these other other companies haven’t done something as well. This is highly speculative, [and] not based on neighborhood need.

Following the public hearing, one supervisor acknowledged that this appeal is a first step in making sense of “what will probably be an episodic issue between the Board of Supervisors, frustrated citizens, and companies who want to obviously expand and upgrade their service.”

The “cumulative impact” of multiple sites emerged as a big concern for the supervisors, while staff emphasized that their prior recommendation for approval rested on maintaining San Francisco’s status as an information technology leader. The staff report quoted AT&T’s problems with capacity relating to strains devices such as the iPhone are placing on cellular systems.

Two questions for government at all levels: Are U.S. wireless siting regulations in the 1996 Telecom Act a valid basis for guiding deployment of a broadband wireless network? “Why let the corporations decide?”