The Job That Powers Your Interwebs
Meet a tower climber who straps in, climbs up, and holds the world’s communications together ... so you can watch Love Is Blind UK
In the new episode of How to Be Anything, we meet Brendon King. People like Brendon are the reason you’re reading this newsletter right now, the reason you can send and receive text messages, and the reason you can watch the new episode of Love Is Blind UK tonight. Without him, you wouldn’t be able to collect your paycheck or call 911. You need Brendon.
He’s a tower climber, and tower climbers install and maintain the technology that powers our cellular, radio, and broadcast networks. This means strapping yourself to a steel tower that’s swaying like a spaghetti noodle and climbing hundreds, sometimes thousands of feet. Sometimes they don’t tie off at all, and they just free climb (they shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do this).
What surprised me most about Brendon is that while he loves being up there, he also …really doesn’t. “The older I get, the more dangerous the towers get,” he told me. The act of climbing is arduous work. They scale the towers on ladders or pegs attached to the structure (some of the taller ones do have elevator cages), but they’re wearing bulky safety gear, and the wind is blowing, and it’s cold up there, and sometimes a nesting falcon is living at the top. Keep in mind also that these ladders are vertical; it’s not like leaning a ladder against your house to clean the gutters. On a vertical ladder, you’re working against your body weight that wants to fall backward. Oh, and those pegs? They’re just wide enough for your hands. No, thank you.
Take a look at this video of a tower climber changing a light bulb at 2,000 feet and pay close attention to how wide those pegs are not, and how little is keeping those D-rings from slipping off into the abyss.
To me, this feels like invisible work. I know I take it for granted that my phone will work, that I can write this newsletter and post it instantly, that when I log into Hulu I can watch Love Island right away. I hope now that you’ll remember people like Brendon and be grateful, and support tower climbers in their efforts to make the industry safer (more on that in the links below).
I also hope that you’ll go on a scavenger hunt to find cell sites in your neighborhood. I spotted this one while walking the dog.
OK, now go listen. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Bye and thanks for listening!
Emily
Keep learning
Here’s a list of things mentioned in the episode you’d otherwise have to go Googling for.
Climbers like Tommy Schuch are campaigning for better regulation and corporate culpability in the tower climbing industry. Check out his organization, the Climber Protection Group.
An excellent Frontline documentary about the dangers of the tower climbing industry.
This article by Jeremy Markovich about climbing the tallest tower in North Carolina.
This short segment about a company that disguises cell sites as things like cacti.