AT&Ts cell tower in Fairfield Iowa is currently down for maintenance. Representatives from AT&T tech support indicate that the tower is not expected to be fully operational until January 30th.

I called AT&T after myself and several friends had experienced intermittent to no service since yesterday afternoon.

[UPDATE - 2pm Wednesday, January 27]

I called AT&T technical support to see if they would enable roaming so that I could use the iWireless network. They said they could not enable roaming and that I would be without service on my iPhone for several days (they estimate the tower will be fixed by January 30th). They did give me a $70 credit to my account (one month’s worth of billing). The credit is a nice gesture but does not mitigate being without service for an entire week.

If you live in Fairfield, and have an iPhone or other AT&T phone, call 1-800-331-0500 to get credit for the service interruption.

If you are an iPhone/AT&T customer in Fairfield Iowa, please post your experience getting a refund or share any more news on the outage.

[UPDATE - 2:25pm Thursday, January 28]

Good news for AT&T subscribers! We received an email from Amy Grundman with AT&T Corporate Communications:

I just wanted to let you that service has been restored to AT&T wireless customers in the Fairfield area after an AT&T wireless tower experienced technical errors earlier this week. Our technicians immediately responded and worked around the clock to isolate the problem and restore service. We apologize for any inconvenience to you and our customers.

US Cellular CEO - Jack Rooney

This ran in the Fairfield Ledger several days back. It’s Mr. Rooney’s response to Mr. Goldstein regarding US Cellular’s position on the cell-tower to be sited at Depot Ave. It appears that this response may have been been prior to the paid advertisement from Mr. Goldstein, since Mr. Goldstein references “no credible evidence”, which Mr. Rooney uses here.

This document came to me via Steve Carlson, part of the press/media relations team at US Cellular.

Submitted by: John E. Rooney
President and CEO
U.S. Cellular

Dear Residents of Fairfield:

As the president and CEO of U.S. Cellular, my top priority is to make sure our customers are satisfied with everything we do. Every call matters to us because we believe the most important thing about your phone is the person on the other end. In Iowa we’ve built a network of 700 cell phone towers so our customers can count on their phones to work wherever they are.

These towers greatly enhance public safety, help communities attract businesses, and offer a convenience we’ve come to expect. In order to keep our customers connected we must build new towers to handle the growing number of calls and improve the strength of the signals. It’s for these reasons we need a new cell tower in Fairfield and chose the location on Depot Avenue.

To date there is no credible scientific evidence that cell phone towers pose a risk to people’s health and I can assure you that we wouldn’t build towers if we thought otherwise. We commissioned a third-party test of the tower’s radio frequency (RF) levels and they concluded that it’s well within the government’s acceptable limits. Someone standing at the base of the tower would receive less than 1 percent (.81) of the acceptable RF levels. At 50 feet from the tower the RF level drops dramatically to .02 percent and at 500 feet the amount of RF rounds to zero (.00000000).

We began construction on the Depot Avenue tower in February after receiving our permit but put it on hold in good faith when residents expressed some initial concerns. Since then our associates have spoken with dozens of residents, some in favor of the tower and some against. They met with Mayor Malloy, Maharishi University and a committee to discuss alternative locations and unfortunately these sites were not environmentally suitable to build a tower. After exploring all of our options and in light of the RF study mentioned above, we felt our current location is the best one. We shared our plans with Mayor Malloy and resumed construction.

Cell phone towers are vital to our network to deliver our reliable service but at the end of the day we believe we’re more than just a phone company. Since 2005 we’ve donated more than $640,000 to schools and nonprofits in Iowa and our associates have volunteered more than 1,350 hours. One of our 10 $100,000 winners in our Calling All Communities campaign was Kuemper-Catholic High School in Carroll, and in our Calling All Teachers campaign a teacher from Washington Elementary School received $900 in funding to buy classroom materials. In 2009 we’re giving more than $3 million across our markets to support children’s education.

I hope this letter provides some peace of mind for those concerned about the tower. We care deeply for our customers and the communities where we live and work.

We believe in something better,

Jack

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This is a reprint of a letter written by William Goldstein, General Counsel of Maharishi University of Management. This letter recently appeared in the Fairfield Ledger as a PAID advertisement. I am publishing it here for free.

June 15, 2009

Dear Mr. Rooney:

Big Tobacco and Big Cell Towers

A very significant thing happened last week. In addition to your letter to our community printed in the Thursday Fairfield Ledger, the House voted 301-97 to pass federal legislation stringently regulating the tobacco industry, following the Senate’s 79-17 vote. That marked a great achievement after a decades long battle.

But even more noteworthy is that, contrary to its competitors, Phillip Morris – the nation’s largest tobacco company – came out in support of the bill saying it was behind tough but fair regulation. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., sponsor of the bill and committee chairman at the memorable 1994 hearing where tobacco industry executives denied nicotine was addictive, relished the long-sought victory:

“I think we are today at the last gasp of the tobacco industry’s efforts to protect their profits at the expense of the health and lives of the American people and to get children to take up this habit.€ Read the full story

Despite much opposition from the community and efforts by Mayor Ed Malloy and the City Council to find an alternate site for the cell tower planned at 509 W. Depot Ave, the news out today is that US Cellular is resuming construction of their cell tower.

Here is a letter from one of the opposition leaders, Diane Rosenberg: Read the full story

This is a response to Jeff Wilson’s opinion piece titled “Cell towers OK with regular guy” which appeared in Thursday’s edition of The Fairfield Ledger.

Read the full story

Cell Phone Tower Documentary from Luke Stenger on Vimeo.

[Local Fairfield resident Will Merydith is a husband, father, web developer and writer for Living In Small Sizes.]