Rogers Wants to Build Three ‘Innovative’ Cell Towers in Vancouver

Toronto-based telecommunications giant Rogers wants to improve cellular reception on the North Shore in BC by installing three new cell towers in West Vancouver along the Upper Levels Highway.

Rogers hired a local architect firm to design 36-metre-tall towers that wouldn’t be eyesores to visitors and residents.

“This is the first time we know of in Canada that a design architect firm has been used to design a cellphone tower,” Rogers senior consultant Cindy Grauer told The North Shore Outlook. “There are thousands of households on the North Shore that don’t have reliable service,” added Marc Draper, Rogers’s manager of radio engineering.

The towers would have no visible antennae and would bridge gaps in cellular service to the area, which is treed and hilly, Rogers says. The telco goes so far as to call the proposed towers a “new form of industrial design,” offering up the ability to add colours and lights to the towers to create “a kind of public art.”

Vancouver-based Telus has also been investing heavily in the region. In the past four years, the local telco has spent nearly $30 million on technology and infrastructure on the North Shore.

UPDATE: Rogers has sent us the following clarification (emphasis theirs):

Rogers has no intention of adding any embellishments to the new tower design, nor does West Vancouver and there are no plans to do so. That would require local community support, which is not what is being pursued here. The illustration was just a means of visualizing what it could look like if a local government wanted to mark highway exits, traffic alerts or any other public purpose include art. Any embellishments would be those requested by the local community.