DoIT is pleased to announce that in early August the new communications tower began construction. This comes after many years of work to replace the tower that is now behind courthouse. The original tower was built in 1981 to support instructional television broadcast amongst the University of Maryland System.
Since the mid-90's, the tower has primarily served as cellular tower providing cellular service to the campus and surrounding community.
In 2005, the FCC updated the safety regulations on the amount of weight that towers could hold. UMBC was at limits for that tower and the cellular carriers were unable to add additional equipment to that tower to support the increasing demands of smart phones for cellular services. As a result, cellular service to the campus has been over subscribed, especially during peak hours when students have returned.
In 2012, DoIT worked closely with Administrative Affairs and facilities to get a construction loan to build a new tower and we have the spent the last two years working the FCC and the carriers on finalizing the details of new site. The original tower, required a large number of guide wires to stabilize the tower, thereby taking up a very large amount of land behind the courthouse. The new tower, while wider at the base, is a self-support tower that does not require guide wires. This new tower will be the same height as the existing tower but will be able to support significantly more weight.
We expect that the construction of the tower will be done by the end of August. Once the tower has been inspected and the ground work for the carriers has been completed, we will begin working with the cellular carriers to transition their equipment to the new tower. The original tower will be taken down in first half of 2017 once the carriers have transitioned all their equipment to the new tower.
For campus users, we expect that by late fall we will see dramatic improvements in cellular services, which are increasingly important as a campus safety resource for emergency notification.
Below is a picture of the tower going up as of August 2nd.