Perhaps the angry spirits of the thousands of birds who die flying into these towers every year are haunting them. Aviary Poltergeist, anyone?

I wouldn’t be surprised…

I don’t understand. Whether or not a cell tower worker has to work extra hours or not, aren’t there safety precautions that they always have to take? ….Like, I don’t know, clipping themselves into a harness when they are dangling off of a hundred-foot tower??

I would imagine that AT&T is hiring more workers to get the job done. And maybe there’s a chance that those workers aren’t up to speed on all of the safety precations. But, I can’t believe that it’s AT&Ts fault that those workers are falling off of towers.

If anything, it could be just the fact that there are more workers working on towers this month than the previous months. And by doing so, the accident rate could even be the same (per worker hour).

Either way, I’m not sure that suggesting that that 3G is causing more deaths is the right way to report on this story. I’m sure the math is much more complex than that.

But, of course Erick, you’re probably late for your next post, so I guess there’s no time to do the story the justice it deserves.

More likely;

” So why do some technicians not practice 100% tie off? It could be bravado, a false sense of security, a youthful belief of immortality.”

http://www.wirelessestimator.c.....ing%20News

This is awesome. I love that you put “software upgrade” in quotes, as though you don’t believe at&t and that’s them giving you a bs excuse. Followed by your imagination on what you believe is really happening: normal site testing. Fantastic. So because advancements in technology = troubleshooting/testing new setups = more climbing towers = more death.

Oh, no, you said that it’s at&t’s rush that’s causing these people to die. “have to die for at&t”

So at&t is telling these people to throw caution to wind and get up there? They’re telling their engineers that they no longer can take the safety precautions that they’ve been doing for years because at&t is in a hurry? Maybe I’m an idiot in assuming that these people have to be intelligent to get the engineering jobs, but for some reason I think that if they were told they could no longer do their jobs in a safe manner that they’d just QUIT or at least say no?!

Bleh, what a terrible article. Don’t try to blame at&t for this and more so, don’t try to suggest at the iphone being the blame.

There must be something seriously wrong with their safety program if that many employees have fallen. I worked for a power company for five years and we had to climb power towers all the time. I never heard of anyone falling from a power tower while I worked there.

I suggest chains.

NOW BACK TO WORK.

Reminds me of a few months back when a few bloggers died and that article came out asking if blogging was killing people.

Promoting Apple at any cost? Honestly, 3G wasn’t invented yesterday. The slow adoption of the technology in north america is due to incompetent regulators and cell phone companies. These kind of apple zealot stories seems to live in an alternate reality… as if 3G doesn’t or couldn’t exist before 3G iphone… just like smart phone/PDA+phone doesn’t exist before iphone.

Probably because they were tired of hearing Michael complain about twitter being down.

slow news day at TC ?? I guess ..If there is an earth quake in US tomorrow or Jesus reborn ..these Apple Fanboys will attribute it to launch of 3G iPhone ..Techcrunch is giving serious competition to Scobel

why is it legal and okay to have a risky job that might result in death (cell phone tower climber) but it’s not okay to sell your organs? You get paid to climb the tower and possibly die. You would get paid for your spare kidney but possibly die.

“Yet surely there are times when the towers need to be climbed to troubleshoot the new set-up, place testing equipment on the tower, or remove old equipment that is no longer needed.”

Speculation? Lets get the facts first Erick!

@3, the math is actually pretty simple: 6 deaths in 5 weeks.

@5, I put “software upgrade” in quotes because it was a direct quote from the Apple 2.0 post from an AT&T spokesperson.

There’s this thing called winter in much of the country. Outdoor work tends to be put off during winter until spring.

Spring started about 5 weeks ago.

I have worked on AT&T/Verizon cell towers before, and the individuals that climbed the towers were third party contractors that were tied off at all times. I do not understand how th can be falling off if they are clipped on.

“the math is actually pretty simple: 6 deaths in 5 weeks.”

Well yes, that’s pretty simple math, but it’s a little too simple to really establish any sort of cause and effect relationship. You might want to examine some numbers like…

* How many jobs did technicians perform during that period?
* How many jobs did they perform during the prior period?
* What’s the number of incidents or deaths per job?
* How many jobs were performed in the same period last year?
* Does the average number of deaths or incidents per job vary by carrier?

sad. i thought it only happens in india.

Even if you are right, 2 deaths is nothing compared to the working conditions of factory workers in China where these 3g i-hypes are made.

I used to climb towers. You may not be aware that cell sites are visited quite often, with technicians going up and down all the time for routine maintenance. The tower company is there, the two-way SMR people are there, the cell folks are there. Roof tops too. The technician is ultimately responsible for climbing and working safely. I dint care how tired I am, or what pressure on schedule, if I am not feeling sharp and ready, I dont climb.

It’s a tough job.

What is the purpose of this article? Linking the tragic deaths of mobile tower service workers and Apple’s technological innovations is not journalism.

Tower accidents are 100% preventable - when someone falls from a tower it means they were not attached. Anyone not applying the strictest safety protocols (body harness, tie off, safety line and someone on the ground securing that safety line) is asking to die.

Don’t you think it is wreckless to blame this on AT&T?

I refer to Ken Sheppardson’s comments. You (TechCrunch) don’t have remotely close to all the information, so why make this assumption?

This peice is pure FUD. I’m really dissapointed to be reading shit like this on TechCrunch.

Heh. I love that quotes in a blog mean sarcasm to readers more often than they mean it’s quoted from another source. Oh, blogosphere, how I love you.

A rare miss by Shonfeld. Not that there aren’t sources that support the notion that there may be a correlation, but it’s still kind of sensationalism and something I’d expect out of a Valleywag-type.

The good news though is this: Blackberry has a new marketing campaign they can run. “The Blackberry Bold - our phones don’t kill people.”

P.S. I hear suicide rates are through the roof on kitties who get humiliated on icanhascheezburger. Pls 2 envessuhgate.

I’m with Jason. What a complete load of horse shit of a story.

“Apple is expected to announce its 3G iPhone in June. Hopefully, nobody else will have to die for AT&T to be ready for it.”

Get a grip Erick.

i would totally kill for an iphone.

how many more people have to die while checking techcrunch on their 3G AT&T phones while driving. murderers!!

@Erick Schonfeld

While I don’t have any experience in the telephone industry, I do have quite a bit of experience in both the power industries as well as the oil refining industry (both have lots of towers too) and the majority of all workers that work in these industries are not employees, but subcontractors.

If people are injured it is usually the actual injured persons fault for not adhering to the safety procedures. In some cases it can be because of a co-worker that you were injured, but in the case of someone falling off of a tower, it is solely that persons fault because they did not practice 100% tie-off.

I can almost guarantee that AT&T enacted some kind of safety protocol that grounded every tower worker for a period to discuss what happened and how to prevent it. After the first death happened it became even more so the employees fault for falling because they should have been made aware quite recently of the dangers of not tying off. Now I have never worked for AT&T so this is mostly speculation, but it is very common for companies to do this with any recordable injury (which a death is definitely one of them).

Anyways, the point that I am trying to make is that the blame should not be placed solely onto AT&T.

“Yet surely there are times when the towers need to be climbed to troubleshoot the new set-up, place testing equipment on the tower, or remove old equipment that is no longer needed.”

Erick, you are way out over your skis here. What are your qualifications to assess what is needed to do a 3G upgrade to a cell tower? This is a weird story.

TC should stick to Web2.0 company profiles and news. This type of story dilute TC’s focus and credibility within the niche.

“obserd” is a great type…. combines obscene with absurd, lets a little geek in with the nerd …

bad coding is obserd, or verizon is just obserd with their can’t use your own ringtone policy…

Maybe AT&T will finally resolve the problem of the 3G towers sending the wrong time of day to smartphones like my Samsung Blackjack.

Fact: AT&T is under a lot of pressure to get its 3G network rolled out (because of the iPhone)

Fact: Cell tower deaths have spiked recently.

The point of this post is simply to raise the question of whether the two are related (see the question mark in the headline?).

Maybe some of you don’t like to hear these types of questions. I am still going to ask them.

As for the last line, three of those deaths have already been linked to AT&T.

Now, was it the workers’/contractors’ faults for not following safety procedures or was it AT&T’s for pushing them “to their limit,” as the commenter I quote suggests? That’s another good question.

I look forward to your follow-up article after you investigate future to try to answer the question.

“there are times when the towers need to be climbed to troubleshoot the new set-up, place testing equipment on the tower, or remove old equipment that is no longer needed.”

@13 and @30, that information comes from an industry vet who prefers to remain anonymous.

And people wonder why bloggers don’t often get confused with journalists.

The reason “software upgrade” looks like sarcasm rather than a direct quote is because you don’t quote 2 words in a story unless that’s all that was said (like ‘the groom said, “I do.”‘). You quote a significant portion of what AT&T said. I’m pretty sure they didn’t say “software upgrade” and leave it at that.

There’s so much idle speculation by someone who apparently knows little of the background to make it useless.

The tie-in to Apple is tenuous at best. There were plenty of 3G phones on AT&T’s network before the iPhone even came out.

Finally, there is no way any manager, board member or shareholder at AT&T is going to look at 6 preventable deaths and say “big deal, all in the name of further profits”. One preventable death of even a subcontractor would be enough.

Welcome to the list of bloggers too sensationalist to listen to…

Are there any official statements or testimonies on what the workers were doing when they fell or if they were in bad weather, etc?

Most likely just a coincidence, but we like to speculate don’t we?

@3, the math is actually pretty simple: 6 deaths in 5 weeks.

Yeah, thanks Erick. I’m sure that explains everything. No need to dig deeper into the story. You just nailed it! Yep, here comes that blogging Pulitzer.

AT&T is sooo guilty here. Thank god you don’t have to adhere to those pesky journalistic codes anymore. Otherwise you would have had to show some real evidence. And we just don’t have time for that these days with your heightened posting schedule.

Hmmmm…. Hey, wait a minute! It’s Arrington is just like AT&T. He’s got you posting so many stories these days that you don’t have time to write real stories anymore! It’s like you’ve fallen off the tower of journalism. Oh crap, it’s the 6th time you’ve used a question mark in your headlines in 5 weeks! Man Arrington is sooo guilty here. It’s all his fault.

6 lives for the satisfaction of millions is a small price. Call me insensitive if you want but we freak out about death and injury way too easily. Maybe these climbers just suck at their job requirements and Darwin just gave them the smack down.

Your hippie “we care whether people live or die” spiel is not going over well, here, in Objectivist-land. We are libertarians — we believe in the power of profit, nothing more, nothing less. All else is inconsequential. Now, back to your regularly scheduled program.

This blog entry is weaksauce.

AT&T isnt shooing these guys up the towers and telling them to do it without safety precautions.

Erick,

In all seriousness, I think the issue with your story is that you make an accusation without actually making an accusation:

Is AT&T pushing tower-climbing workers too hard as it rolls out its 3G data network in preparation for the launch of the next iPhone?

Your words.

I know, I know. You simply asked a question. No harm, right? But you are using a question mark in the same manner that Fox News uses when they do a hatchet job on someone. It’s unprofessional. It’s bush league. Just because you work for a blog doesn’t mean you get to say stupid sh*t like that.

Why not simply report on the story the way wirelessestimator.com does it? Simply write that X number of the fatalities happened on AT&T jobs and let the reader ask the question themselves? For instance, “At least half of this year’s fatalities happened while the tower worker was on an AT&T project. — WirelessEstimator.com”

We are smart enough to draw our own conclusions. When you ask the question for the reader, it comes off as a hatchet job. And that’s really unprofessional. TechCrunch has become the Fox News of tech news.

Erick your analysis is so unscientific it hurts, I think you deserve most of the negative comments you’ve got.

Try Freakonomics for a fun and easy introduction to cause and effect.

Erick, regarding your comment (#33),
“The point of this post is simply to raise the question of whether the two are related (see the question mark in the headline?).”

Putting a question mark in the headline doesn’t change the fact that you’re very obviously trying to create an association where there could be none. With lines like “Hopefully, nobody else will have to die for AT&T to be ready for it.” you are implying a connection. The three deaths you say are “connected to AT&T” are only connected in the Apple article by the fact that the deaths occurred during AT&T projects, not that they were caused by AT&T.

I’m not saying AT&T’s not responsible, there’s not enough facts to go on here. Which is exactly why your article is dangerous in its speculation.

To add to Philiburn’s points…

“Is AT&T pushing tower-climbing workers too hard as it rolls out its 3G data network in preparation for the launch of the next iPhone?”

It seems to me that this question is just an attempt to connect the story of horrifying, tragic deaths to technological innovation, thus making these tragic stories relevant statistics for a TechCrunch blog post.

“An AT&T spokesperson denies there is any connection, telling DeWitt that the $20 billion upgrade of AT&T’s data network requires no more than a “software upgrade” at the base of each tower. Yet surely there are times when the towers need to be climbed to troubleshoot the new set-up, place testing equipment on the tower, or remove old equipment that is no longer needed.”

It sounds like your question was answered here, but you don’t accept the assertion that AT&T towers require no hardware upgrade for the 3rd Generation iPhone based on… absolutely nothing. “Surely there are times when the towers need to be climbed” proves that you disagree with their assertion based on, not journalistic research, but assumptions about wireless towers.

There has also been an increase in deaths from workers on towers of other service providers (which do not support the iPhone), which suggests that maybe if there is a specific problem, that it may not be unique to AT&T.

Based on the knowledge that AT&T is doing an upgrade and your own assumptions about what this upgrade requires, you lack the information to actually accuse AT&T of the negligence and “pressure’ that resulted in the tragic deaths of three people. So instead you insinuate it by asking a rhetorical question and providing the reader with selective information. This is the same kind of tactic that political smear campaigns use.

If all it takes is a software upgrade, then why isn’t America already blanketed with 3G coverage?

Lets see, 3 men die working for one phone company, 3 others for some other phone companies and Apple is to blame???

You are really lame…

It’s not inane reportage. In fact, I compliment Erick for having the courage to write about a problem that needs to be exposed. Apple’s and AT&T’s degree of culpability is not the issue. The problem is the pressure for tower contractors to get the job done with unreasonable deadlines and pressures.

Winter is a busy time for cell tower installations. It doesn’t stop with inclement weather. So to state that the reason there haven’t been any deaths during the winter months is not appropriate. In fact, it would make more sense that you would find a higher amount of deaths on AT&T projects when it is more dangerous to climb.

The push for the 3G is partially responsible for the increase in fatalities. There is considerable pressure from all of the major management companies to meet AT&T’s rollout.

AT&T says it is as simple as changing software at the base of the tower. Don’t believe that spin for one moment. The work requires us to climb and work on the towers. Period.

The push for the 3G is partially responsible for the increase in fatalities. There is considerable pressure from all of the major management companies to meet AT&T’s rollout.

AT&T says it is as simple as changing software at the base of the tower. Don’t believe that spin for one moment. The work requires us to climb and work on the towers. Period.

I’m sorry, but are you actually suggesting that the 3G deadline is more dangerous than the other deadlines you had for previous upgrades?? Seriously, climbing a tower is part of the job. I still don’t understand how you put blood on AT&T’s hands.

Unless installing 3G requires some uniquely dangerous maneuver, there is absolutely no reason why the 3G upgrade should be any more risky than every other upgrade that’s ever been done to a cell tower.

Maybe if there was some statistic that AT&T is making cell tower works climb twice as many towers per day than normal (as opposed to hiring twice as many workers)…you might be able to connect to AT&T to the fatalities. But, since Erick didn’t take the time to find such a statistic, we can’t make that kind of connection.

Well…at least a legitimate journalist wouldn’t be able to make that connection.

I can´t believe you draw that conclusion after such terrible incidents.

Fact: The readership of TechCrunch has risen in recent years.

Fact: So has knife crime in UK inner cities.

Is TechCrunch inspiring youths to stab people?

Phrasing it as a question instead of an answer doesn’t stop it being inane. It’s a mistake to think that you don’t need evidence to ask a question; you need less evidence than you need to state as a fact, but you still need some reason to ask that particular question instead of every other possible question, e.g. “are cell phone tower deaths causing their co-workers to work harder on the 3G network in order to bury their grief”.

So, according to the article, there were 0 deaths in the four months before April - those months being, umm, WINTER. I suspect that there quite simply wasn’t as much work being done on the towers during that time due to weather - which I’m relatively sure neither Apple nor AT&T controls. Why not practice at least the most basic fragment of journalism and at least have comparison data from the same period last year. Although, of course, every lost life is tragic, there is nothing in your article that indicates this is actually unusual for the industry (and perhaps that should be the real story).

Some observations about this piece:
1. The author must know little about cellular technologies.
2. The author must care little about defamation and potential libel implications of his remarks about AT&T.
3. The author must be writing more for entertainment than with journalistic intent.

I would expect more from the writers and editors at TechCrunch.

Fact is AT&T, Apple and many other large coorporations selling in the USA do use what should be described as slavery, do employ children, do not care about workers rights, they do exploit developping nations and do not care about workers safety.

That is also how our so-called free market works. You produce your product in countries that underpay and don’t respect human rights. You use so-called contractors an other intermediaries to not have responsibillity for the workers, may they be in illegal unsafe and underpaid workig conditions.

People should look at the facts, the fre market is not fair if it is not regulated and that all workers are equally cared for and that all companies are held responsible for the work and pollution being done on their priducts, no matter the intermediaries.

Gee, thanks Charbax.

I love how you use the word “Fact” so much, but are unable to produce a shred of evidence of this child sex slavery by corporate America.

In order to use the word “Fact” you kind of need to show us some evidence, you twit.

I’m a communication tower climber and have been for over 11 years. Anyone interested in the fatality rate of this workforce should understand that often there is a chain of contractors 5 deep between AT&T and the lowest tier contractor and the second level is always a mega general contractor. If you were to drive to an AT&T site and ask one of the climbers who he’s working for “Bechtel” would be as likely an answer as “AT&T”. To draw a straight line between AT&T and the dead tower climbers is to ignore every entity in between, each pushing as hard. It is also to ignore the fact that there were other fatalities on non-AT&T projects.

The information available on theses fatalities so far this year, though, indicate the tower climbers were not using the fall arrest safety equipment they were supplied and they were not following the industry wide “100% tie off” rule. Who can be blamed for that? Certainly not AT&T as they, in fact, have very little contact with the tower climbers.

I don’t know your motivation for writing about these deaths. The total lack of meaningful research as well as the provocative tone suggests to me that you are much more interested in engaging in sensationalist sound bite media than the subject you wrote about here.

By the way there actually have been 7 tower climber fatalities this year, not 6. The most recent death occurred May 22, 2008 in Dade County, Florida and the climber was not working on an AT&T project.

dam thts weird probably they wernt straped down im a tower tech for high maintance comunication

back in about 1998 quest or qwest were getting ready to kick off their network . they told the company that I was working for they had to have about 15 tower done in 30 days. we only had about 10 workers. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. it wasn’t about getting enough hours to get enough money to pay rent or buy a truck. it was about getting the job done so I can get some sleep. we slept in our trucks enough to give us enough energy to keep working. we pretty much worked as much our body could do and then slept day or night. our company said “do what you can do, don’t kill your self” quest said “get it done” they had done there public anouncement of there network startup a month ago. my point being I guess is that these networks say that such and such will happen at this date and it will happen at a cost to the workers. there are only so many tower companys out there and when a network wants something done all these tower companys are doing these things for these networks and when the network can’t get their deadlines straight that’s when contractors die