City residents can expect 4G service by fall 2014

By PETER VARGA

Iqaluit residents can expect a major upgrade to cellphone services in 2014, once Bell Mobility installs two new cellular towers in the city.

The upgrade promises to bring wireless service in the Nunavut capital up to a level offered in major Canadian cities, known as 4G, needed for smartphones and tablets.

The wireless company will install new technology on its two existing towers as part of the plan.

Representatives from Bell Mobility and other companies involved in the upgrade shared their plans with Iqaluit’s planning and development committee Nov. 6, in an effort to answer longstanding questions about safety and the placement of cellphone towers in Iqaluit.

“We’re trying to bring Iqaluit to the next generation of cell service,” Brock Enderton, manager of real estate and government relations, told the planning committee.

“We know that when we do that, there will be a dramatic increase in our network demand. And in order to ensure that we provide a high level of service, better than what you’re experiencing today, we need to provide additional capacity.”

“Additional capacity” means Bell Mobility will build more cellphone towers in Iqaluit as demand in the city expands, Enderton and network engineer Roger Pettersson told the committee.

Questions about cellphone towers and Bell Mobility’s plans for Iqaluit first surfaced on Sept. 5, when the committee heard a proposal to build a 35-metre-high tower next to Qikiqtani General Hospital.

Concerns centred around alleged health hazards from transmissions, and the proposed tower’s location in the way of a snowmobile trail.

Enderton and Pettersson told the committee that Bell Mobility has since modified that proposal, deciding to build a shorter 25-metre tower in a different location, also next to the hospital but out of the way of the snowmobile pathway.

The tower installation would cover a fenced-in area about 10 by 10 metres in size.

The presenters also dispelled fears about the effect cellphone transmissions may have on city residents, and patients and staff of the hospital.

The wireless communications industry is regulated by Industry Canada, which follows a code on safe antenna transmissions set by Health Canada, Enderton said.

Health Canada’s “Safety Code 6 Guidelines” specifies limits on public exposure to radio frequency energy, and cell transmissions in Iqaluit would come to “a fraction of one per cent” of those limits, the Bell Mobility manager said.

Asked about the safety of wireless use in and around hospitals, Enderton said transmission towers at hospitals are commonplace throughout the country.

“We locate cell sites on hospitals all the time. It’s actually a very common location for cellphone infrastructure,” he said.

“That’s because hospitals have come to rely heavily on cell technology. Many doctors will carry iPads with applications on them, and they are on our network to provide that service.”

Bell Mobility’s upgrade plan also calls for a cell tower to be constructed in the city’s North 40 area close to the airport, likely on a rooftop or side of a building, Enderton said, which does not require permission from the city.

Enderton and Pettersson could not say whether the cell service upgrades would expand cellphone service over wider areas of the city, particularly to areas where signals are weakest — such as the Plateau and Road to Nowhere subdivisions, and Apex.

Pettersson said the two new towers, with upgrades to Bell Mobility’s two towers already in place, should improve service in areas of the Plateau neighbourhood nearest to the airport, and a greater area in Frobisher Bay extending “up to 50 or 60 kilometres out” from the city.

Once the new towers and upgrades are in place, “we will determine where the demand is,” Pettersson said.

“If a particular site can’t take any more (added cellphone traffic), we will have to add another site in that general direction.”

Asked about poor service along the Road to Nowhere, where the city plans to build a new subdivision, and Apex, Pettersson said he “would really like to work with the city on this, to find a good location” for added cell towers.

The two neighbourhoods’ residential character complicates Bell Mobility’s ability to construct more towers to serve these locations, he added, not to mention hilly terrain.

“I can’t find a good spot,” he said.

City councillor Kenny Bell, chairman of the development committee, said public consultations should help clarify which areas the city can highlight for possible cell tower locations.

Enderton said construction of both towers could start at the beginning of summer next year, once land permits are finalized, and the upgraded service would be in place by fall of 2014.