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Raise your hand if you’ve had to redial (retap? repunch? oh, forget it) a local phone number because you forgot to use the area code.
Raise your other hand if you have yet to add the area code to all the numbers in your cell phone address book.
These likely won’t be the only glitchs we’ll discover while attempting to adjust to dialing three extra numbers. Oh, wait, here’s another one: The autodial feature on my phone hit a snag because the caller ID feature only shows seven digits for local numbers.
I’m supposed to be able to scroll to the number, hit a button and lift the receiver. The phone does the rest. Suddenly, all I can get is a recording telling me to dial the area code. (You know that recording; you’ve heard it, too.)
OK, maybe I’m just lazy, but time gets really crunched in my life. This feature makes me feel a little bit more in control (well, it used to, anyway). I had been able to delegate this tiny chunk of manual labor. And now I’m thinking it would be nice if the phone company, which gets a substantial chunk of my monthly budget, was not pulling this particular rug out from under me.
To try and rectify the situation, I engaged in a prolonged Internet chat with a “technician� employed my service provider. Her name was Joy, which was ironic almost from the get-go.
The chat was frustrating. Joy took a defensive tone, suggesting it was surely not her technologically progressive company’s fault. Clearly, I must be an idiot.
Portions of the conversation went exactly like this (Honestly. These are copied and pasted. And no, I didn’t warn her that the conversation was being recorded and might be used for training purposes.):
Joy: To completely understand your concern, could you please elaborate more on it.
Karen: My phone displays caller ID — name and phone number. To return a call, I can select the info from the caller ID and the number is called automatically when I pick up the receiver. Since the area code does not show up on local calls, I cannot use this feature with local calls.
Joy: Oh, I see. (Pause.) Karen, the area code in your area is the same.
A variation on that response, as our conversation continued:
Joy: Can you please try to call now and dial the number again with the area code?
Karen: That’s what I have been doing. What I want is for the [anonymous phone company] system to add the area code to all numbers so that it appears that way on my caller ID and my phone knows what number to call.
At which point, I was told to refer to my phone’s owner’s manual.
Why can [anonymous phone company] not program its system to show local area codes, I asked. Same answer: refer to the owner’s manual.
When I asked if the answer to my question was “no,� I was told by the technician, “I’m not saying no to that, but … �
You guessed it.
She also suggested I refer to the [anonymous phone company] Web site for additional features I could purchase.
So, the only question that seems to leave is, where is my phone’s owner’s manual?
Actually, unbelievably, I know where it is: in the garbage. I threw it out just a few weeks ago, because I never use it, and I had a fit of organizational compulsion.
Doodling = Eureka moment
In the end, the technician did solve my problem, in a way: To avoid total exasperation during the exchange, I began fiddling with my phone. I discovered that I had programmed it with the 860-area code when I bought it, more than a year ago.
I figured out a way to delete the area code. Now my phone doesn’t know which area code it’s in, so it can’t tell the difference if a call that’s coming in is local or long distance.
Believe it or not, it worked. I reached across the desk and called myself from the fax machine. Voila! Area code on the caller ID, from the same room! I hit the auto dial button, and voila, no recording, and pure elation when my fax phone began to ring.
Sometimes it just doesn’t take much.
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Telecom Reg’s Best Kept On the Books
When Connecticut land-use commissions update their regulations, it seems like a no-brainer to jettison old telecommunications regulations adopted decades ago during a short-lived period when municipalities had authority to regulate second generation (2G) transmissions prior to the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) being ordered by a state court in 2000 to regulate all cell tower infrastructure as “functionally equivalent” services.
It is far better to update those regs instead, especially for macro-towers given new technologies like small cells. Even though only ‘advisory’ to the CSC, the preferences of towns by law must be taken into consideration in CSC decision making. Detailed telecom regs – not just a general wish list -- are evidence that a town has put considerable thought into where they prefer such infrastructure be sited without prohibiting service that many – though not all – citizens want and that first responders rely on for public safety.
Such regs come in handy when egregious tower sites are proposed in sensitive areas, typically on private land. The regs are a town’s first line of defense, especially when cross referenced to plans of conservation and development, P&Z regulations, and wetlands setbacks. They identify how/where the town plans to intersect with the CSC process. They are also a roadmap for service providers regarding preferred sites and sometimes less neighborhood contention. In fact, to have no telecom regs can weaken a town’s rights to protect environmental, scenic, and historic assets, and serve up whole neighborhoods to unnecessary overlapping coverage and corporate overreach. Such regs are unique to every town and should not follow anyone else’s boiler plate, especially industry’s.
Connecticut is the only state that has a centralized siting entity for cell towers. The good news is that applicants must prove need for new tower sites in an evidentiary proceeding and any decisions have the weight of the state behind them. The bad news is that the CSC used to be far less industry-friendly and rote in their reviews, which now resemble a check list. There is an operative assumption at CSC that if an applicant wants a tower, they must need it, otherwise why spend significant money to run the approval gauntlet? This reflects a subtle shift over the years at CSC from sincere willingness to protect the environment toward minimal tweaking of bad applications with minor changes. The bottom line is that towns really cannot rely on the CSC to do all the work for them.
What CSC issues telecom providers is a “certificate of environmental compatibility” after an evidentiary proceeding (not unlike a court case) with intervenors, parties, expert witnesses, and the service provider’s technical pro’s sworn in and subject to cross examination. Service providers get to do the same with any opposition from intervenor/party participants – like towns and citizens -- and their experts. It’s an impressive process whose ultimate goal is the fine balancing between allowing adequate/reliable public services and protecting state ecology with minimal damage to scenic, historic, and recreational values. They unfortunately often fall short of their mandate – like approving cell towers with diesel generators over town aquifers -- evidenced by CSC only rejecting about five cell towers in the past 15-20 years.
The CSC was founded in 1972 and clarified its mission in the 1980’s to prevent the state from being carved up willy-nilly by gas pipelines, high tension corridors, and broadcast towers. With the sudden proliferation of cell towers beginning in late 1990’s, it became the most sued agency in Connecticut by both an arrogant upstart industry if applications were denied and by towns/citizens when bad sites were forced on them. CSC gradually formed a defensive posture that drives their decisions toward industry with deeper pockets and attorneys on retainer.
For citizens, nothing can wreck one’s day like the CSC. It behooves towns to protect what little toolkit they have, and understand the legal parameters of the CSC’s playing field. The CSC is not a “normal” government agency where municipal/citizen redress is based on logic and local support. Their process is largely immune to everything but specific kinds of evidence – like town regs with setbacks/fall zones, radio frequency transmission signal strengths, sensitive areas identified, and detailed wildlife inventory, among others.
There is a current cell tower fight involving two intervening towns -- Washington and Warren; both with good cell tower regs – over a tower site within 1200’ of a Montessori School, near Steep Rock’s nature preserves with comprehensive geology/wildlife databases that include endangered, threatened and special concern flora and fauna, on established federal/state migratory bird flyways, within throwing distance to a historic site capable of being listed on the Underground Railroad, and with an access road on a blind curve entering a state highway that will permanently damage wetlands, vernal pools, and core forests. There are well credentialed environmental experts, including Dr. Michael Klemens, former chair of Salisbury’s P&Z, as well as the former director of migratory bird management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and an RF engineer testifying to alternative approaches, plus three attorneys representing intervenors. It is the most professional challenge I have seen at CSC since Falls Village successfully mounted one that protected Robbins Swamps several years ago.
The hearing is ongoing, with uncertain results. To see what it takes today to stop an inappropriate tower siting, see Docket #543 under “Pending Matters” at https://portal.ct.gov/csc before removing local cell tower regs – the lowest hanging fruit that any town can possess in case it’s needed.
B, Blake Levitt is the Communications Director at The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council. She writes about how technology affects biology.