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Section 4: Safety Guidelines and Warranty Information
4A: Safety 116
with making false and unsubstantiated claims. According to
FTC, these defendants lacked a reasonable basis to substantiate
their claim.
10. What are wireless telephone base stations?
Fixed antennas used for wireless telecommunications are
referred to as cellular base stations, cell stations, PCS ("Personal
Communications Service") stations or telephone transmission
towers. These base stations consist of antennas and electronic
equipment. Because the antennas
need to be high in the air, they are often located on towers,
poles, water tanks, or rooftops. Typical heights for freestanding
base station towers are 50-200 feet.
Some base stations use antennas that look like poles, 10 to 15
feet in length, that are referred to as "omni-directional"
antennas. These types of antennas are usually found in rural
areas. In urban and suburban areas, wireless providers now
more commonly use panel or sector antennas for their base
stations. These antennas consist of rectangular panels, about 1
by 4 feet in dimension. The antennas are usually arranged in
three groups of three antennas each. One antenna in each
group is used to transmit signals to wireless phones, and the
other two antennas in each group are used to receive signals
from wireless phones.
At any base station site, the amount of RF energy produced
depends on the number of radio channels (transmitters) per
antenna and the power of each transmitter. Typically, 21
channels per antenna sector are available. For a typical cell site
using sector antennas, each of the three transmitting antennas
could be connected to up to 21 transmitters for a total of 63
transmitters. However, it is unlikely that all of the transmitters
would be transmitting at the same time. When omni-directional
antennas are used, a cellular base station could theoretically use
up to 96 transmitters, but this would be very unusual, and,
once again, it is unlikely that all transmitters would be in
operation simultaneously. Base stations used for PCS
communications generally require fewer transmitters than
those used for cellular radio transmissions, since PCS carriers
usually have a higher density of base station antenna sites.