InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

[walldiver]

Cingular is by far the most conservative of the major wireless carriers when it comes to environmental reports. Their environmental attorneys scrutinize every report to the extent that they might as well have written it themselves. If we so much as included 10 site photos instead of the required 12, they would send us an email requesting two more photos. We're supposed to photograph the proposed wireless site looking at the site from all four directions plus looking away from the site towards all four directions, plus take four additional photos. It's hard to think of more photos to take if your site is an existing telephone pole. When we tried cutting down on the number of photos to save bandwidth by standing 40 feet from the site and captioning our photo "Looking North at and Beyond Site," it was a no go. We had to stand 50 ft away and take one photo looking north, then stand at the site and take another photo looking north. As if those photos would determine whether there was contaminated soil at that site.

None of the other carriers come even remotely close to scrutinizing reports written by their enviromental vendors. Just throwing this tidbit out there, as it's possible their conservatism could be company-wide, and extend into their licensing/business practices.