In 2001, the campus formed a committee to review the issue of cellular telephone sites on the UCI campus. These sites are required to support cell phone services — a given vendor must have a local installation to provide their users service. UCI had only a single Cingular site on campus at the time, and users of other vendors such as Verizon and Nextel experienced limited service availability.
The committee recognized the need for additional sites, and recommended that they be allowed within certain aesthetic and campus impact constraints. The Administration approved the recommendations in the summer of 2001 and NACS was assigned the role of cell site coordination.
A second Cingular site has been installed and was operational as of August 1, 2002. A cell site for Verizon is under construction, and a site for Nextel is currently in the final steps of the approval process. Both of these sites should be operational within the next six months. Having cell sites for multiple vendors on campus will be beneficial for every day use as well as for emergency use.
For information on cell site safety, please visit www.nacs.uci.edu/communication/celsitesafety.html