With more people switching to cellphones and getting rid of their landlines, good cell service in a community is a huge requirement.
The City of Humboldt received a Discretionary Use Application from SaskTel to install a new 25 metre stealth telecommunications tower at 706 Main Street.
Rob Kaminski, a representative from SaskTel, was at the December 10 regular meeting of Humboldt City Council, to answer questions and explain the purpose of the tower.
He said the tower is to enhance the service to downtown Humboldt.
"The old system of putting the tower outside of town doesn't work anymore," said Kaminski. "That technology used to work when customers only used their devices for calls only."
Right now, most of the city is covered by the tower located north of the city, but with more people using cellphones, that service is not enough.
"Data growth is growing at a rate of four to six per cent," said Kaminski. "A smart phone uses 35 times more capacity than a traditional phone. A tablet uses 120 times more. More than half the wireless users today are on smart phones."
He explained a lot of people are cancelling their landlines and relying on cellphones.
"This new site is required to address capacity within the downtown city core," said Kaminski.
If the new tower is not put in, the system will be overloaded and users will experience dropped calls or incomplete calls more frequently.
"It will help augment the current tower north of town," said Kaminski. "It will be a seamless transition back and forth from the towers."
SaskTel has been watching the service in Humboldt closely since last year.
"We tried to add capacity in right before Christmas and it helped for about two weeks and then it was used up," Kaminski explained.
They added more again during the summer, which lasted a little longer, but is slowly being used up as well.
"We need the new tower (to be) more central to split the service up into three sectors instead of trying to cover with one," said Kaminski. "It is good coverage, that is not what we are trying to fix - we are trying to fix capacity."
Not only will the new tower help with capacity, it will also be able to expand to the next generation wireless network, called LTE, in the future.
The only concern brought forward to the City was if the tower will give off noise. According to SaskTel, it will not. The most noise it will give off is the same as a large tree in a windstorm.
They hope to tender out the construction of the tower by June 2013.
