More than 90percentt of cellphone sites are off the grid.
Police helped establish that Carpenter was near the scene of the robberies by securing from his cellphone carrier his past "cell site location information," which tracks which cellphone towers relay calls.
"A hundred cellphones demanding bandwidth per cell site may not be out of the question in congested downtown areas," said Tim Pozar, a wireless engineer who installs custom repeater systems to improve cellphone coverage at offices in the San Francisco area.
More than nine million people visit its cellphone Web site each month, a following that surpasses the audience of most computer-based Web sites.
Under the act, municipalities cannot create laws that prevent or have the effect of preventing cellphone tower sites.
But instead of the basic text ads shown on regular cellphone Web sites, the ads come in different sizes, with more sophisticated design, and can include small images.
David Ciccone, the founder of the cellphone-focused site MobilityToday.com, points to an extreme example: a $340 leather case with silver accents for the Treo 700, from Vaja (www.vajacases.com).
TowerSource, of Colorado Springs, which maintains an extensive database of cellphone tower sites, said the number of towers in Connecticut had increased 27percentt in the last two years, to 1,441 in 2008 from 1,135 in 2006; in New Jersey, the increase was 19percentto to 2,630 towers in 2008 from 2,215 in 2006.
Obviously, I had no Internet, e-mail, cellphone or Web site.
The developer first heard about the news when his associate, Geoffrey P. Wharton, called him on his cellphone from the site, saying "something really bad is happening".
