Rapid City, SD suffered a bridge collapse in 2020, highlighting the need to have a communications system with no weak points. As KNBN-TV points out, cell towers have been springing up around the region. The newest tower occupies a site on Nemo and Rolling Hills Road, and is one of four in a cluster designed to aid first responders.
“We know that this particular site is going to be an extremely critical site, and we know that this area is difficult to cover,” said Cheryl Riley, President of the Northern Plains States for AT&T. “And so we’re really concentrating a lot of our effort through the FirstNet builds on this particular area of the state.”
The FirstNet system used by AT&T now incorporates Band 14 spectrum in the majority of its Pennington County cell sites. In the event of an emergency, this pathway can be dedicated for use by emergency personnel only.
“We’ve invested over $100 million in the last three years in South Dakota,” Riley continued. “And what we did is we got input from many public safety agencies throughout the state. Where do you need connectivity? And that’s where we tried to build these sites.”
“Any time that you can get additional coverage, especially in rural areas from our major carriers, that’s a good thing,” agreed Jerome Harvey, Pennington County Fire Administrator, reported KNBN-TV. “Not only for the public to be able to reach out for help but also for us as firefighters and other emergency personnel to be able to communicate back to them and with each other. This new site is important to our firefighting and rescue efforts in west central Pennington County. It will help firefighters communicate, coordinate and, potentially save lives when seconds count.”
(see top story)
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