Cell Sites Uncovered

The church steeple, that traditional high-bandwidth link to God, is becoming a pipeline for secular communication services.

So are chimneys. Flagpoles. Faux palm trees. Even the glowing 80-foot obelisk that towers over the parking lot at the Irvine Spectrum.

We’re talking cellular phone antennas, those spindly rods that blossom like metallic cactuses across the landscape.

At their barest, they are considered an eyesore by many folks. That’s why companies like Pacific CellSite Systems Inc. in Redondo Beach are concealing thousands of the devices in anything and everything you can imagine.

Fryer’s Site Guide, a resource for wireless companies in search of tower locations, estimates that more than 1,500 steeples nationwide now are homes for antennas. Another 5,000 are hidden inside other tall objects.

Altogether, more than 300,000 rooftops across the country have been called into the service of cell phones.

With most residential lease agreements, a telecommunications carrier pays the property owner between $1,000 and $3,000 per month for a tiny bit of space.

“Property owners are realizing there’s gold on their rooftops,” guide publisher Jim Fryer said. “In our business, nothing’s sacred.”