Please look up. You will almost certainly see them.
Steel poles. Lattice structures. They are silent giants that rise hundreds of feet into the sky and keep the world connected.
If you don’t stop and look closely, it might just look like metal. But there’s a lot going on.
Three different service providers often have the same structure. You can tell by just looking at the base.
Each carrier has its own equipment box. These boxes contain radio transmitters and receivers.
This is the hardware that allows the tower to communicate with your cell phone.
The connection is made with a thick cables. They run from the radio to the antenna.
This is all about grounding.
The tower itself. The cables. The base equipment.
It is all heavily grounded. This protects against lightning strikes and power surges.
You can spot a shared tower easily.
Find the gate.
A 5-way latch means that it can be opened by 5 different service providers. Any one of those five can get in.
But the problem isn’t just the tower.
There is also the issue of mobile phones.
Let’s look at these next.
