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Pepperdine students, faculty and staff will have more options in cell phone service plans with the approval of three new cell towers on campus.
Sprint’s application to install the third new cell phone tower on Pepperdine’s Malibu campus was approved Tuesday. Sprint is the third and final cell phone company to have towers installed on campus. The towers will improve Sprint coverage to the Pepperdine community as well as the area surrounding Malibu.
“We at the university decided to have service for students and faculty we would allow the three main companies to have towers,” said Associate Vice President and Chief Information Officer Hilary Baker. “That decision was made years ago.”
All three sites were approved with no opposition or questions at the open hearing at the Los Angeles Court House, according to Baker.
Before the towers could be approved, Sprint was required to post notices on campus and notify residents living within 300 feet of campus, according to Jim Bell, Los Angeles assistant regional planner II.
The School of Law has a Verizon tower and Cingular tower on its roof. There are also two cell towers on the Dresher Campus. Pepperdine agreed to allow the three major companies to install towers on campus. The process started with Cingular, which was followed by Verizon in 2005.
“One [tower will be installed] on the water tank, another is on the roof of the Keck Science Center and the third is to be located on the Page Residential Complex,” Bell said.
The documents have the Keck Science Center as a location for one tower, but the tower will be installed on the roof of the Appleby Center. Keck and the AC share a common roof.
The towers are relatively small and cannot be seen from the ground. Since the towers have been approved the next step is contract negotiations. Sprint is subcontracting the instillation to the engineering firm Cable Engineering Services.
“Our experience from previous cell tower projects is that the contract negotiations are complex and can take many months,” Baker wrote in an e-mail.
The only cost to Pepperdine for the installation of the towers is coordination and management time and effort from the Information Technology division. Sprint and Cable Engineering Services will pay for the instillation and maintenance. Facilities Management and Planning will play a coordinating role with the IT and the contractors.
“We certainly allowed all three to come in and have a presence on campus,” Baker said. “I believe it benefits the community and companies, we are really pleased because they can provide for students and the towers [coverage] leak over into the community.”
This is an improving service option and will not affect any of the current cell phone service coverage on campus.
Submitted 02-09-2006
MALIBU, CA
