Osage County Herald-Chronicle | Osage City cell tower nearly online

Jeremy Gaston/Herald-Chronicle

Workers from AMF Electrical Contractors, Inc., St. Louis, complete wiring on the new cell phone tower at 304 N. Sixth St. in Osage City Monday. The tower was completed this week, and will be online in as little as two weeks.

Jeremy Gaston | Reporter

OSAGE CITY—The wait is nearly over for Osage City. The county’s largest city, with more than 3,300 residents, has been in the dark since the dawn of the cell phone age, but there are more bars on the horizon.

Telecom Realty Consultants, LLC, completed construction of a 150-foot, multi-carrier tower earlier this week. Significant service improvement should be noticeable later this week.

“I think it’s about a two-week period to optimize the site and get it ready for the network,” said Paul Wrablica, of Telecom Realty Consultants. “AT&T is forecasting it’ll be on the air between the middle and the end of July.”

According to Wrablica, AT&T is the only carrier signed on for the tower, but the company hopes to add additional providers.

“We will diligently be pursuing other carriers,” Wrablica said. “That’s the whole business plan.”

The Osage City tower is one of 10 towers owned by Telecom Realty Consultants. According to Wrablica, six of the towers are currently providing service to customers in several Kansas and Missouri areas.

“Currently, we do a lot of work with AT&T, but with every tower, we solicit to all the other carriers,” Wrablica said. “Our goal is to build multi-carrier structures – to eliminate the proliferation of towers and help the community get better signals.”

The pre-existing serviced towers are a big step up from Osage City’s previous attempt at securing a provider. In late 2007, the city secured a contract with Crossroads Wireless, who went as far as installing cell phone equipment on the city’s water tower, shortly before filing for bankruptcy in Spring 2008.

The equipment remained until this spring, when city employees removed it while performing general maintenance on the water tower.

“It had been sitting there for a while, but they never fired it up,” said Nick Hernandez, Osage City manager.

Hernandez began working with Wrablica in March 2008 after receiving word of Crossroads’ imminent bankruptcy. Soon after, the city secured a land contract, and a year later, a building permit to construct a cell tower and support building at 304 N. Sixth St. The steel structure was raised earlier this month, and the final wiring was being completed on Monday.

The tower will house AT&T’s signal initially, but is built to expand with the addition of carriers, frequencies, and even height.

“The foundation is designed for the additional load to go 50 more feet up, if a carrier wants addition signal,” Wrablica said. “All we have to do is add steel to the top.”

For now, AT&T based customers could see improvement very soon. AT&T had originally given an on-line date of Sept. 1 several months ago, but Wrablica and Hernandez expect the tower to be online before then. Once activated, it will be the best service the city has seen.

“I think the majority of the people in the Osage City zip code will definitely see an increase in coverage, and they’ll have in-building coverage,” Wrablica added.