Improved wireless service coming to Surrey
Posted July 29, 2012 10:00 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
SURREY (NEWS1130) – Can’t get wireless service in Surrey? Try standing next to a street light.
The city is converting a number of poles into wireless towers and if you didn’t know any better, you probably wouldn’t even notice the difference.
Twenty street poles will have mini-towers put on top of them as part of a pilot project designed to improve wireless coverage in the city.
“It means that we can stay ahead of this exploding demand for wireless capacity and meet our customers demand for wireless data services without them even noticing the additional infrastructure,” believes Shawn Hall with Telus.
He notes these mini-towers are being put up in other places as well.
“They provide additional wireless data capacity in areas where people are using it,” Hall adds. “[In] downtown cores, it could be a really busy intersection — areas like that where there is really increasing demand for wireless capacity.”
Surrey isn’t the first place to try something like this. Wireless towers will be installed at electric car charging stations in Vancouver’s West End. That’s pretty tame compared to what’s happening in Arizona where towers on the roadside look like cacti.
Another place where cell towers are often hidden that you probably wouldn’t think of are on the big crosses outside of churches.
