KVCC Launches Cell Tower Academy

The Kalamazoo Valley Community College in Michigan will launch their Cell Tower Technician Academy next month. The six-week program will train students how to build and maintain cell phone towers safely. Tom Sutton is the Director of Wind, Energy and Technology at Kalamazoo Valley Community College said, “What’s led to this great demand now is that many of your major carriers like T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon are in competition with each other, trying to get more and more bandwidth and more and more customers. Everyone likes data right? Everybody likes to watch a video. To do that requires a massive amount of bandwidth.” (WMUK-FM) These students will be able to have a hands-on experience because towers have been donated by Newkirk Electric. “The work is done normally at great height, on top if the antenna arrays, and so a fair amount of time in the program is put towards work and height safety, combined with that a basic knowledge of electricity, some basic mechanical things around bolting and aiming antennas, and how to safely hoist and rig those things leads to a short term program,” Sutton explained (WMUK-FM)