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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