Pine Belt Wireless completes 15th tower replacement

Pine Belt Wireless has completed replacing 15 out of 19 towers in Dallas County as part of an ongoing replacement project in several Black Belt counties. 

Pine Belt is replacing towers with "new and improved" equipment pursuant to the Federal Communications Commission’s Secure and Trusted Communications Network Replacement program.

Five years ago the federal government mandated that Pine Belt and other network providers replace equipment made by China due to concerns about security threats, said a press release from Pine Belt. 

"This eventually led to a law passed by congress mandating that all of the companies rip all that equipment out and replace it like equipment manufactured by companies headquartered in democratic nations," said the press release. "And, since the swap was being mandated by the US government, a cost reimbursement fund was also established."

The new equipment being installed by Pine Belt is mostly made by Nokia, with key components coming from Microsoft and HPE. The company has also retired its 3G CDMA network and is now using 4G LTE services assigned by the FCC radio frequency channels.

"The benefit of this is that both the total system capacity and the effective coverage distance from any given tower is greatly improved," the press release continues. "Likewise, the swaps set the stage for the eventual upgrade to 5G."

The recent replacement in Dallas County is the 52nd in other projects in Choctaw, Marengo, Perry, and Wilcox. The progress in these counties so far is: 

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Choctaw: 13 total towers, 10 completed 

Marengo: 11 total towers, 5 completed 

Perry: 12 total towers, 9 completed 

Wilcox: 16 total towers, 13 completed 

The press release said that 10 more will be completed by the end of January, while the remainder will likely be completed by the middle of 2024. 

"The last set of sites require extensive structural modifications and in some ground up construction of new towers in order to accommodate the load created by the replacement equipment, which is larger and heavier than that which it is replacing by the end of the year," said the press release.