As a result, signals don't travel very far and PCS antennas generally must be within five or six miles of each other. That means 120,000 new antennas will be needed in America to hook up PCS systems, say industry experts. In cities, most PCS equipment will be hung on existing communications towers, or fixed to tall buildings, church steeples, even light poles at high school football fields. But in the country, where there are fewer tall structures, thousands of new communications towers are planned. Perhaps a dozen such structures, three times as many as exist today, could eventually be sticking out of the rumps of Benzie County's rolling hills, like the stingers of giant hornets.
Hundreds more appear to be coming to the rest of northern Michigan.
Thousands of acres and miles of new access roads will be cut in the forest, giving drivers easy routes to wild areas once reachable only on foot. Hundreds of new culverts will be built. Sand from the culverts typically erodes and damages the region's trout streams. The towers, painted red and white and draped in red warning lights, are a visual intrusion that will degrade the North Woods experience that has proved to be the foundation of this region's thriving resource-based economy. For these reasons, few here are happy about the towers.