New Tower To Serve Infowest Logandale Customers

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

The staff at local internet service provider, Infowest, has been busy over the past few months in expanding service and capacity for their Logandale customers. The company has installed a new 50 foot tall metal frame transmission tower on the private property of Logandale Storage on Jensen Ave. in Logandale.

The tower is expected to make a signficant difference in service to Logandale customers of Infowest, a company that is touted as Moapa Valley’s sole High Speed Wireless internet provider.

According to Adam Hardy, the local operator and manager of Infowest, the new tower will better distribute the internet traffic to existing Logandale customers as well as expand the company’s signal to areas and neighborhoods where before it had been weak.
“This tower will take a lot of the traffic of the northern part of Logandale,” Hardy said. “It will take some of the demand off of the other towers that we have in the area. And it will pick up a few areas that couldn’t see our existing towers.”

The newest tower is equipped with the next generation transmitters which operate at a much higher speed, Hardy said.

Hardy added that one of the challenges in providing wireless internet is keeping up with the rapid change in technology. The equipment is usually outdated within 2-3 years, while the actual lifespan of the equipment is about twice that. But it is usually the growing demand on that equipment that causes the replacements.
“The equipment usually doesn’t get to the point where it is failing at the end of its lifespan,” Hardy said. “We are usually upgrading for capacity reasons long before it burns out. So it is a constant cycle of replacing equipment to meet growing demand.”

Originally, Infowest had sought to place this transmission tower on the site of the Logandale water tank, on the hill just east of the fairgrounds. But that site is on BLM land. Working with the federal agency for permits for the new tower proved to be too difficult and costly for the provider.
“They wanted us to do all kinds of environmental studies to show impacts on the different species,” Hardy said. “That was even with the fact that our tower would have been located inside the existing water district compound on the site. So all of those studies had already been done. With what they were requiring, it would have taken years and cost thousands of dollars.”

The footprint of the tower involves a six foot block of cement that extends five feet deep into the ground to secure the tower. The tower was then brought to the site in 10 foot prefabricated segments and assembled. Then transmitters are fixed to the top of the tower.

Hardy said that the company has found that negotiating a long-term lease with existing private property owners is a much simpler and viable process than trying to secure permits on public lands.
“If it is on BLM land we don’t even consider it anymore,” Hardy said. “It is just not worth it.”