i think they're referring to is our consumer website. there is a big difference between coverage and capacity. what they're looking at and what they're referencing is coverage in the area. on our five-year plan which i have that we submit every six months to the planning department which looks at our projections for five years where we are placing new sites, where we will be upgrading existing sites, this is an upgrade to an existing antenna. they create 360 degrees. we have a lot of antennas in the area. the coverage is showing good coverage. the problem is, the way that we direct the signals on the antennas are very difficult to direct signals which is why we're replacing them and upgrading them for panel antennas. on the antennas -- these are 4g lte generation.

this is where the devices are going. when you try to use a 4g phone on a 2g network you run into problems. this is a capacity issue. there are qadry adds that the appellants may have missed. because it does depend on different types -- times of the day and what is being run over that network. and there is a lot of varying factors that i am sure have, gets on that website. i present a coverage vs. capacity issue. when we talk about capacity we are talking about the number of people on the network, we're talking about what is being downloaded, everything from checking your muni stop to win the next bus will come or

downloading netflix or live streaming tv. everything a customer happens to be downloading at the time they are on the network. >> i am still confused in part because the at&t coverage area you're talking about does refer to 4g data, and you seem to have coverage. the document you submitted to planning that talks about the gaps in coverage refer to coverage, not to capacity. this coverage capacity section i am trying to understand. >> ok, so. i'm looking for the question. president chiu: you're suggesting there is a capacity vs. coverage capacity -- difference. that is what your marketing materials referred to. >> we have coverage.

we have six to eight omni antennas within this circle. we had an independent third- party go out and do a study. based on their own data, nothing obtained from us and look at the interference that is being caused by the antennas. when you go out you will have four or five bars. because of the antennas are shooting signals. you have eight different antennas shooting signals 360 degrees. panel antennas focus the energy, send it toward the horizon and are able to place those signals where they need to go as opposed to sporadically shooting them in the area. you are going to have five bars in the area because there are these antennas shooting.

there is -- when you get, when you pick up a call on broadway and get down to lombard street, the antenna is picking up your signal. when you get to the lombard street and you are out of the signal coverage area, the neck sant'anna does not know where to pick you up because you are supposed to be bouncing from antenna to a antenna which is what these antennas allow us to do which is where we're upgrading. it is a much better use, directed use of our frequency than having our signals emitted by an 360 degrees directional. president chiu: ok. i appreciate your trying to create a distinction. if i am the consumer going to your web site, it seems to me that there is a lot of good coverage in this neighborhood, right? there's nothing that indicates you do not have capacity or

coverage. either the marketing materials are different from what you're saying to planning or there is some discrepancy. do not see where we're going? >> the maps we submitted to the planning department, they talk about demand and high usage periods. they're looking at a signal to noise ratio. not just coverage. >> it says coverage during high demand periods. we are comparing apples to apples, right? >> the map, no. there not apples to apples. the maps on the website are pure coverage. there are disclaimers on that map as well that is explained as coverage under optimal conditions. the maps we submitted our showing coverage given the level of demand from the users who are trying to use it in that area. at a particular time of day.

we made a distinction between high demand periods and low demand periods. we're looking at apples and oranges. the maps we submitted show you the capacity constraints as well as the coverage issues. president chiu: i do not want to belabor this point. folks understand the point i am making. from your marketing materials it seems like he did not have coverage materials. it seems to have many alleged coverage issues and this is what is confusing to us. >> we have a capacity related coverage issue. we brought bill hammond to do analysis so we could give you the information separate and independent from anything in our systems and the best way to solve this is to have him come up and explain what tests he did and what he found. would that be helpful? president chiu: sure. >> ok. >> good afternoon, supervisors.

my name is bill hammett. i manage a firm of 17. our clients include at&t and their competitors, landlords, and engineers. this is to look at what is the effect, what is the impact, what is available in a network? we do not do network design, we do not designed th the cell sit. we looked at the package as well like the other experts said. at&t nor other carriers tend to want to divulge their own performance data. unlike the other experts, we went out and took measurements to see what is going on out there. we wanted to determine, is there

a service problem in that area? where we started was the same maps that you're talking about in the application materials from at&t. this one is the before condition. it is talking about service at the peak time and it also has another one for after. what we did is we overlaid this to in order to define the area where the proposed upgrade of the micro-cell, the area where that is supposed to based on at&t's material show an improvement in service. we used a telephone that includes software that ericsson developed and has put out by the

company. and drove the area. we visited the area three different times. the first time was on wednesday, november 30 from 6:40 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.. what we did is we went to dozens of locations in this area that takes -- to take spot measurements and determine what is the service there. there was adequate signal, getting four or five bars but the performance was bad because of the signal to noise ratio. there is too much other activity in the band that causes the phones to not pick up the signal and decoded. we returned at what we thought would be a lower period of activity. finding the same kind of thing but there was a lot of traffic. we went back on sunday morning

at 5:30 a.m. in order to examine when we could find the least amount of activity. what we found is there were a number of different signals in this area. when you pulled the phone and look at it, it is picking up sources from a lot of other sites, not just one or two that it wants to catch but it has a lot of them and they are equal signal levels. what this does is creates interference in the phone. it looks like knows -- the noise to the phone and phone cannot pick out the signal in needs to monitor. the design, you might have to strong signal so it could handoff. when you have four or five, four or more signals, it is a known thing in the industry. you can read technical papers on it. this causes pilot pollution. that is what we find in this area. many locations suffer from this. the service is not provided in

this area because of that phenomenon. so many different sides. we found 13 different sources when we went through this area. these are the sites that were mentioned. a couple of major sites further down fast -- a van ness -- down van ness. supervisor avaloscampos: i understand the capacity issues you have identified. the capacity related coverage issues you have identified and expert talked about pilot pollution. i understand the explanation as to why would you presented to planning was presented the way it was. is there -- do you provide that to consumers?

any potential customer of at&t, do you let them know about the capacity related coverage issues you talked about? >> to my knowledge, i do not know exactly how that is explain to customers. i am not on the retail side of the business. i can say that every time a site is upgraded or moved, it changes the capacity of that site. i do not know exactly how that is communicated to customers, but i am happy to find out and see if there is a difference between how capacity and coverage if that is your question is communicated to customers throughout the city. every time we do significant upgrades, we do have our corporate communications who do issue some releases talking about coverage and capacity.

i do not know when you walk into a retail store how that is presented to a customer. >> to the extent that there is a question about the evidence, the new evidence that was talked about, you have an explanation as to why notwithstanding that new evidence of what is on the website, why you nonetheless feel that the information that was provided to planning was accurate. i think that position would be bolstered aif you could point to additional information that you provide consumers so that they are aware of what they are buying when they are buying something from at&t. i think it would be relevant to this discussion to know if you can point to specific information that is provided to consumers and potential customers about the coverage related issues that you pointed out that relate to capacity.

is anyone of your experts here, anyone here, can they point to specific information? you either provide that information or you do not. >> provide that to our customers? supervisor campos: yes. >> i can find out how that information is communicated. each time that we do go through and of great, how that is communicated as well. supervisor campos: if i may follow up to your expert. thank you. in reviewing the documentation related to this case, have you ever been given any information about -- that shows that at&t provides the type of coverage

related information that has been discussed here to their customers? >> i would have no way of knowing how that is developed. we are called in to do one assessment. >> has any such information been given to you by at&t? >> no information like that has been given. supervisor campos: thank you. president chiu: any other questions? i know there is time on the clock. if you want to continue with your presentation. supervisor wiener. supervisor wiener: thank you. i want to ask similar questions that i asked to the appellant and the planning staff. that is having an independent evaluation, an evaluator selected by the planning department based on getting

input from both sides and selecting an evaluator and having that evaluator -- do an actual evaluation. either there is or is not a significant gap in coverage and making that part of the cu. i would ask at&t's response. >> is that the condition to approval today? >> i think we have two things we would request. that is a professional license registered engineer with the state of california and they are willing to sign nondisclosure. >> those are reasonable things. assuming that. president chiu: would like to continue with your presentation? i interrupted you a number of times. >> i think if the board is ok

with that, at&t would be ok with it. i want to point out a couple of things. we talked about enough of the five bars and what it means. initiating a call and being able to hold onto it even though you have five cars. the structural integrity i think we have addressed. there are pounds of equipment going into the steeple. the equipment will be housed in the second floor room. and -- let's see what else we had in here. i think ann marie address the engineering analysis and it was within the fcc limit. [bell] and that we feel the proposed

equipment complies with the standards for review and is consistent with the san francisco general plan which supports development of technology infrastructure and the growth of emerging telecommunications industries. it is our -- consistent with our plan. it is least intrusive means by which at&t can fill the gap. thank you. president chiu: any additional questions to the project sponsor? why don't i ask if there are -- is public comment. seeing none, why don't we call the appellant for a bottle of up to three minutes. >> excuse me one moment, if you would.

hello again. i would like to address first specific issues raised by president jurchui and i would le to present our perspective. president chiu as the question that planning was told the police had no problems, there were no violations. i would give you a report which is in front of you now. which in fact is the direction by the department of buildings that indicates that this project as of november 29 was i and code enforcement. further, as of november 29, you

will see that there were violations on the building. i do not know what the checklist -- i can tell you that our checking indicates that information is fallacious. let me turn to the heart of the problem that we have as residents of this area. that problem is much of the information that you have been told by mr. hammett and at&t was not subject to review. the planning commission cannot. at&t does not revealed the information. and in fact you heard for example mr. hammett tell you they did a study by november 30. by november 30 it was out of the planning commission and was about to come to you. that was not part of his initial analysis. if i could with all due

deference to mr. hammett, his company derives a substantial amount of money by representing at&t. you will understand that i appreciate his integrity, there is a concern that perhaps an independent party might come to a different conclusion. in fact, in the case of lookout mountain in colorado, his firm had exactly that problem. the fcc received information from his firm concerning a radio antenna. when the fcc would not to check it, the reported it was in compliance they found out it was not. at the same time as his firm producing airport, they told the city in look out exactly the

opposite. it is not that they are not telling the truth. it is that there needs to be independent verification and there is not. the burden is upon at&t and even by what mr. hammett said. president chiu: if i could ask you to follow up your comments, explaining what happened even if that was true. >> what is even if? president chiu: i would like you to finish your sentence. >> my sense is simple. the fact of the matter is, you represent the people of san francisco. all the people of san francisco. if at&t comes to you and asks for something, you should ask them to prove what they say. even their own expert says that the material they submitted does not prove it. there is some hidden package someplace that does.

that is not the way democracy is supposed to work. thank you. president chiu: thank you. colleagues, any questions to the appellant? any questions to any of the parties that we heard from in today's hearing? ok? seeing none, this hearing has been held and closed. this matter is in the hands of the board. ladies and gentlemen, thank you for engaging in this hearing. for many members of the public and thus, we have been frustrated over the course of these issues that continue to rise in front of the board. this is one -- why when i had any -- meeting with the neighbors, i had specifically said that it is important to make sure we were not addressing

issues of aesthetics, property values, health, etc.. and knowing what the standard is and with the high standard for us here, i wanted to make sure this appeal addressed different and more fact based scenarios. i have to say and it is no surprise to you, colleagues, what we have heard from the appellants with regard to the fact they have brought an this is different from any appeals we have had two experts who challenged if there is enough data to suggest that this ought to be appropriate for me, they're marketing materials that seem to conflict with the testimony provided by the project sponsor, it at the planning commission, to me, these are reasons that i would consider in a reversal of the certification. given the high threshold of what that would take, i am not sure that we would have consensus with eight votes that we should do this. i do gather from supervisor

wiener that there might be some interest in imposing additional conditions, to potentially disapprove the planning commission's decision but approve the project with additional conditions. i would like to ask if there is a motion you would like to make in this arena to address what we have heard today. supervisor wiener: thank you. yes, i won't repeat everything i said before. it is frustrating for a lot of us to hear the swearing contests about whether there is or is not enough coverage. i believe that we should require, there should be an independent evaluation of at&t's underlying did it with a confidentiality agreement. someone selected by the planning department who is i independent. and who would then be a

condition and if there is a significant gap in coverage or is not, either at&t's conclusions are accurate or not. i have distributed an additional condition to my colleagues and i have given it to the parties. it would add the following conditions. uses authorized as long as an independent evaluator selected by the planning department with input from the party's determines that the information and conclusion submitted by at&t in support of its request for a conditional use are accurate. at&t show corporate with the evaluator. at&t shall provide data to allow the value and to verify that the map data and conclusions about service covered submitted by at&t are accurate. at&t share -- shall bear all costs of the evaluation. the evaluator shall keep the submitted data confidentiality

-- confidential and sign an agreement. the independent evaluator should be a professional engineer, licensed by the state of california. and so my motion would be basically to amend the cu and approve as amended which would be tabling item 35, amending item 36 to include what i just read and moving item 36 as amended and moving item 37. moshin by supervisor wiener, seconded by supervisor farrell. >> supervisor kim, ay, aye. supervisor mar, no. supervisor mirkarimi, no.

supervisor wiener, aye. supervisor avalos, no. supervisor campos, aye. president chiu, aye. supervisor chu, aye. supervisor cohen, aye. supervisor elsbernd. aye. supervisor of the pharaoh. -- supervisor farrell, aye. >> the motion passes. president chiu: thank you. that concludes today's hearing. why don't we proceed to our next 4:00 p.m. social order. >> items 38 through 41. comprising a special order.

approving a tentative personal map. the motion approving the tentative personal map and item 40 is the motion disapproving. item 41 is the -- directing the preparation of findings. president chiu: we have an appeal of the tentative parcel map at 1138-1140 page street. this is -- the way we will proceed is here from the appellant who will have 10 minutes to describe the grounds for the appeal. and each individual shall have up to two minutes to present. we will hear from representatives of the department of public works and the planning brett will have up to tenants to describe the decision to