Rudman's city: Beware! Lumpy lamp-posts are listening to the diners

By BRIAN RUDMAN

When Catherine Hawley spotted the first street light pole with a newly bulging bottom, along Ponsonby Rd, it left her rather puzzled. All shiny new metal it was, with a little door in the side.

Ms Hawley is the local community board chairwoman and has been deeply involved in the long-running streetscape improvement programme. Along restaurant alley, Ms Hawley is the eyes and the ears - and often the voice, too - of the community. She is quick to spot anything out of place, and bulgy lamp-posts were not on any agenda she had read.

She let it rest for a few days until she discovered another one had suddenly erupted out of the carefully landscaped pavement across from the intersection with Franklin Rd. Yesterday she had council staff scurrying around to find out what was going on.

They are disguised cellphone towers. And thanks to Vodafone, these "micro-cellular sites" are popping up all over the place.

On my way to check out the Ponsonby Rd happenings, I spotted another disguised lamp-pole being put up along Fanshawe St on the approaches to the harbour bridge. In all, some 26 are going up in the first wave.

Ms Hawley is rather perturbed that Vodafone - the cellphone lamp-post erectors - got the council's go-ahead without reference to locals such as herself who have been involved in the streetscape renovations. You can appreciate her angst, but that aside, it does appear the good yuppies of Ponsonby have only themselves to blame for the faux antennas now blossoming in their neighbourhood.

They and their teenage kids are crowding onto the airwaves in such numbers that existing cellphone sites are buckling under the overload. Admittedly, locals are not entirely to blame. Also responsible are the restaurant grazers, munching away on their rocket salads, fork in one hand, phone in the other.

The lamp standard is not the first "out of sight, out of mind" solution Vodafone has used to the sometimes vexed problem of siting cellphone hardware. In Manukau City they tried a false tree which, concedes community relations manager Raphael Hilbron, didn't fool everyone, sited as it was among lush greenery of a more natural disposition. But it still has to be pointed out to some, he says, before they realise where it is.

Down in Christchurch, where they didn't come down in the last shower, Vodafone resorted in one instance to secreting its equipment in a fibreglass imitation chimney so as not to to distress the locals. The chimney matched an existing one on the historic building concerned, and apparently did the trick required.

As for our new lamp-posts, they don't seem too calamitous to me. Sure, they do take up a bit of pavement space but, compared to the rows upon rows of tables and chairs along the way, to say nothing of the odd sandwich board or three, they are hardly the most intrusive part of the streetscape.

As for fears that your brain or other vital organs might fry as you walk past, I'm assured the "extremely low-powered" receiving and sending equipment is well up the pole and covers only 200m in most cases, occasionally stretching up to 500m.

The new equipment is to take the load off the main cellphone sites which link into the Vodafone network via landlines and fibre-optic cable.

Talking of poles, the crazy stand-off between Telecom and the local people over the undergrounding of services on waterfront Queens Parade, Devonport, has had a happy ending. You will recall how Telecom refused to share trenches and bury its lines at the same time the electricity lines were put underground.

The result was that instead of removing all poles, the street ended up with twice as many - new fancy street light poles and the old concrete power poles, left holding up a single line of telephone cabling.

The 13 concrete poles have now gone - the costs shared by Telecom and the community - and the telephone company is even talking about the possibility of sponsoring a citywide heritage project.

I guess coming late to the party is better than boycotting it altogether. But it would have been a lot more sensible - and less costly all round - if Telecom had joined the project from the start.