Tag: cell

#365daysofbiking Signal to noise

October 22nd – On my return that evening, I crested Kings Hill during a pink and blue sunset of the most striking kind, and grabbed a chance to catch another of my muses: The Kings Hill cellphone tower with the sky and lights of the Black Country behind.

Antenna, aerials, masts and suchlike have always fascinated me. I know how they work, yet they are still mysterious: Still yet powerful structures exchanging electromagnetic radiation with the atmosphere: Ever present, unchanging yet sinister and secretive.

And particularly beautiful against a sunset or dawn sky…

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April 9th – Hiding in plain sight on the treeline of a small copse on Sandhills, near Shire Oak, is a Tetra mast. Painted matt brown to blend in with the background, it’s not a mobile phone cell tower, but one of the nodes of the emergency services radio communications and telemetry network for the UK.

Erected in the last decade, Tetra is a secure system designed for use specifically with emergency services in mind. Working at a lower frequency than normal mobile GSM, it’s more efficient structurally, provides secure, encrypted communications and provides all the features required for modern operations.

The network wasn’t without controversy, as the earliest systems interfered with TV transmissions in some instances, and it has proven very expensive to implement, although the system is in use now in much of the developed world.

There are a fair few of these installations around. Look out for them – like this one, they can be hard to spot, but mostly share the same, three-element design.