UPDATE The Office of Technology and Innovation of the Mayor’s office of New York City is planning on installing 14 Link5G poles on the sidewalks of Crown Heights, a neighborhood in the central portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, reports COLlive. The neighborhoods of Boro Park and Flatbush are also getting a combined 57 5G poles. Another 18 5G poles are set for the sidewalks of the Upper East Side neighborhood of NYC, The Patch reports.
The locations are the latest planned LinkNYC deployments that are being chosen by the City of New York based on a lack of broadband options, lower median annual income, lack of wireless nodes and high levels of pedestrian and street traffic. A vast majority of the LinkNYC 5G poles will be located in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and above 96th Street in Manhattan. Once fully deployed, there will be 739 new Link5G kiosks throughout the boroughs, according to the NYC Mayor’s Office, which will bring the total LinkNYC network sites to at least 4,000 locations including the WiFi kiosks.
There is opposition to the WiFi/cellular buildout. An Upper East Side community board passed two resolutions against the proposed LinkNYC 5G poles to be installed around the Upper East Side, according to The Patch. Typical objections have been voiced, including the aesthetics of the poles, health fears and a lack of communication concerning their deployment. “I think they are just gigantic and they are huge and they definitely … stick out like a sore thumb,” said City Council Member Keith Powers during the meeting in a city that has 6,455 high-rise buildings.
Comptek Technologies, an Aero Wireless Group company based in Boulder, CO, designed the poles to enable 5G deployments in collaboration with ZenFi Networks and CityBridge. The multi-tenant, multi-service siting solution was developed to accelerate the pace of 5G deployments in the City.
The Link5G poles are a minimum height of 19.5 feet, which is the minimum transmitter height permitted by FCC safety regulations. The minimum bay height is 29 inches, which is required for transmitter separation, with five inches for ventilation. Five bays are required to provide space for the free WiFi and for the 5G transmitters.
“The resulting structure enables ultra-fast wireless services from multiple providers,” said Jim Lockwood, P.E., CEO and founder of the Aero Wireless Group. “Highlights of the structure include five independent, RF-optimized bays to house antennas and integrated radios. Each of these bays can be accessed independently, and each section utilizes frequency specific shrouding to minimize losses.”
The poles are connected to ZenFi Networks’ digital infrastructure, including dark fiber, ethernet, and network edge colocation facilities.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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