2009-07-01 TANTHEM - Laserfiche WebLink

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FOX:Good afternoon, Commissioners. My name is Keoni Fox. My address is 48-472 Kamehameha Highway, Waikane, 96744. And I’m here on behalf of the applicant, Anthem Telecom. First of all, a little background about Anthem. Anthem Telecom is acommunications tower owner and provider. They are not a wireless service provider. Anthem’s core business is the development of wireless telecommunications infrastructure which will allow the co-location of wireless service provider’s equipment. And it is my understanding that the Planning Department recently approved a Special Permit for a Verizon telecommunication tower not too far outside of Paauilo town. And my main objective today was to explain to the Commission why the Anthem project is critical to support the wireless networks of its customers and why the recently approved Verizon project is not adequate for co-location. If the Commission would please give me a few minutes, I actually felt that it would be easier to explain this statement by showing you some maps of existing wireless infrastructure along the Hamakua coastline using a program called Google Earth. Can I have a few minutes to do that? WOODWARD: If there is no objection, go ahead. DOMINGO: No objection, Mr. Chairman. WOODWARD: Go ahead. FOX: Okay, I’ll be quick. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, here is a satellite image of the Paauilo community. And the yellow star you see depicted here on Kamehameha Schools’ property is the location of the proposed Anthem telecommunications facility. Now to the west here you’ll see a yellow tab, and this is the location of a previously approved special permit for Verizon and Crown Castle. This was for a 250-foot tower. It was approved in 2004; and you can see it’s just outside the town of Paauilo. And it’s my understanding that this special permit was recently withdrawn, the tower was never built. A little further west you have the recently approved Verizon project over here. And when Anthem designed this project it was designed to provide a bridge for the gap in service between existing towers above Honokaa and existing towers above Ookala. So if you actually go out west to Honokaa town, I’ll zoom in here, above Honokaa town there’s a 150-foot tall tower. It’s owned by T-Mobile; and on this tower you have T-Mobile, A&T, and Sprint Nextel. On the other hand Verizon is located at a much lower elevation. They have their antennae installed on the rooftop of the Tex Drive Inn which is just makai of the highway, and there really is a considerable difference in elevation here, and it’s for this reason that Verizon doesn’t provide as good a service along this stretch of the highway as some of the other wireless service providers. Now it’s my understanding that at last month’s hearing the Verizon radio frequency engineer testified that the main objective for this new facility was to improve service for Verizon along this stretch of the highway where the other providers are already providing good service. Now if you look east the Anthem Telecom project was designed to hand off signals to the existing 4 EXHIBIT B