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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Well, at least the base station opposition usually has a point: these things are goddamn eyesores.

In ye olde times, back when we actually raised taxes to have money to build things, we built aesthetically pleasing radio towers [1] [2] (my grandpa actually worked in construction of the latter as a crane operator) that have become a beloved part of our city landscapes. No one complained about RF despite the old analog emitters running multiple megawatts of power.

Nowadays? It's usually eyesores on already ugly roofs in urban areas or metal towers looking about as pleasing as a high-voltage transmission lines.

My two cents: Maybe if we would actually invest money into making things look good, we'd get less opposition. And that is valid for a looooot of other NIMBY-plagued infrastructure as well.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernmeldeturm_N%C3%BCrnberg

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympiaturm

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Those towers still have ugly looking antennas on them; they're just too high to really be noticeable on the ground. [0]

But for modern cell networks, you don't really want very tall towers. Taller towers mean they pick up the UHF radios from further and further away. You can realistically only carry the same number of subscribers per cell, so to support more users you're going to want to have more but smaller cells. In even medium density areas, you want your antenna elements closer to the ground to have smaller cells.

Giant tall towers make sense when you're trying to broadcast or receive signals in a large area. They make sense for television or commercial radio or emergency services VHF/UHF radios. However, that's totally unlike modern cell networks today. And even then a lot of emergency services radio systems are going for more of a distributed network of antennas throughout the city instead of just a single giant tower.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Ol...

> Those towers still have ugly looking antennas on them; they're just too high to really be noticeable on the ground.

Yup, and unless you're standing right next to them you have absolutely no idea how huge these antennas are - but visually, they drown like flies in a swimming pool, you can't make them out any more, and that's the point.

Small cell towers can be visually hidden. Even if it's just a sheet of drywall or a fully plastic wrap/enclosure that's printed on to look like wall bricks or roof tiles, I don't care, it doesn't need to be a full fake facade like in NYC [1].

All I want is for the telcos that are robbing us dry here in Germany to have to respect the people whose space they want to use.

[1] https://roadtrippers.com/magazine/new-york-fake-facades/

> In ye olde times, back when we actually raised taxes to have money to build things, we built aesthetically pleasing radio towers

People still build this kind of stuff, it's just less common because it's way more expensive (it's labor intensive, so it doesn't get cheaper over time).

Most companies have turned to the other way of doing this, they just offer money to the buildings, and if they consider it an eyesore, they can pay for the "beautification". Most building managers won't do it though.

The funniest thing of this whole business is that a lot of residential buildings oppose the installation arguing "health issues", which ends up with the antennas built on another building. They not only don't get the cash, but most times their actual exposure goes up.

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