Cell Towers and Google
The usual outlay to build a cell tower is at least $100,000. They have a finite ability to cover cell phone calls - fluctuating from about a quarter of a mile to several miles depending on where the tower is located - whether it’s a city area or the countryside. As long as the demand for wireless service continues, so will the need for more cell towers. Cell phone owners covet the most up-to-the-minute phones and what’s more, they want the finest service possible, so in order for cell providers to improve the quality of transmissions they call for newer and taller cell towers and antennas.
An outdated or congested cell tower, as well as too few or even no cell towers in the area, can cause cell phones’ signals to weaken. But carriers and companies, committed to improving phone coverage, say construction of more cell towers and modernizing the current towers is the most resourceful way to improve service.
The most frequent neighborhood opposition is that cell towers will cause property values to drop. There are many more cell towers than the general public realizes. In order to “hide” them from view, some cell tower landlords conceal them inside structures, for instance, church steeples. They then pay subsidies to the owners that can bring in a significant amount of money. Preserved treescapes often hide cell towers inside an artificial or preserved tree. Disguised as church steeples & crosses, trees, road signs, silos, flagpoles, rocks, cacti, and even more objects, cell towers are faultlessly blending into communities and could be hiding in your backyard right now.
Recently, health opposition to cell towers has become a cause célèbre. However, the American Cancer Society says that “the energy level of radio waves coming off cell towers is too low to cause any noticeable human health impacts…” and that a person would have to stand right in front of an antenna to pick up even trace amounts of radiation.
Google Service uses cell towers to locate users. Google Maps with My Location can locate users who don’t have GPS-enabled phones by basing their location on nearby cell towers. Google says this location is accurate within about 1,000 meters and it’s not done through triangulation of the towers that are receiving the signal.
From Wikipedia:
When Google Maps with My Location finds the current location via the cell tower it will put a lighter blue halo around the solid blue dot indicating that the current location is less accurate. With Google’s new My Location technology, users who don’t have GPS-enabled mobile phones will now be able to take advantage of the added speed and convenience afforded by location information. The My Location technology takes information broadcast from cell towers and sifts it through Google-developed algorithms to approximate a user’s current location on the map. This approximation is anonymous, as Google does not gather any personally identifiable information or associate any location data with personally identifiable information as part of the My Location feature.
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