NEW YORK�New York City is preparing to solicit bids for new streetlight poles that can accommodate more small cells, in order to capture Big Carrier spending before the carriers lose patience with the city and turn to commercial property owners to secure sites, according to rcrwireless.com. More than 2,200 cells have already been deployed in New York, and the city�s senior wireless strategist has another 8,800 applications on his desk from carriers and from systems integrators like Crown Castle, ExteNet Systems and Mobilitie.
Tenancy on some of the city�s priciest poles will be roughly $650 per month, said Alphonso Jenkins, deputy commissioner for telecommunications planning in New York�s Department of IT and Telecom. �In addition to revenue for the city, the multi-tenant poles could give New York more opportunities to deploy Wi-Fi access points in support of its goal of extending mobile broadband to every city resident.
Jenkins wants manufacturers to create designs that mimic the existing streetlight poles and he foresees a need for up to 10 distinct designs, which will need to be approved by both New York�s Department of Transportation and its Public Design Commission.
�The carriers are not going to wait forever for the city to make up their mind,� Jenkins said. �To the extent we don�t, that huge amount of revenue fades into the private sector.�
