But as the cell phone craze caught on in the late 1990s, cell phones, camera phones, text messaging and the like became as ubiquitous as Starbucks and McDonald's. To serve that growth, the service facilities and antennas followed the phones into residential areas, schools and churches, in the form of tall towers, fake trees and other units.

If one knows what to look for, the white or gray boxes and transmission towers can be spotted all over Sunnyvale and the rest of the South Bay.

In the past year, Sunnyvale has seen several controversial proposals for towers in residential areas. Cellular providers are finding themselves running up against residents.

"The problem is that people don't want these towers in their backyards, but they still want to use their cell phones at home," says Jim Ennis, real estate broker and owner of JE Telecom Consulting Inc.

But because of Sunnyvale's population and layout, telecommunication providers are running out of places to put their transmitters. At the same time, more providers are offering music, Internet and video access on their phones, increasing the number of users and the frequency of use.

Sunnyvale resident Ron Bucher says that the increase in cell phone use--and the subsequent increase in towers and other antennas--just comes with today's culture.

"There are so many towers around for different uses, I think they're now a fact of life," Bucher says. "People love their cell phones, and having good reception means towers need to be installed."

Bucher says he uses a cell phone at his house, but also has a traditional phone connected to a wall socket, known as a landline.

His son--who lives away from home while attending school--doesn't even have a landline at his house. Instead, he relies solely on a cell phone.

Ennis says that the move away from landlines is behind the rise in controversies over residential facilities and antennas.

"The cell companies have already exhausted their facilities on the main corridors of Sunnyvale, and they're left with coverage gaps over residential areas," Ennis says.

When those gaps arise, companies need to find places for antennas, and they run up against municipal code. Ryan says that towers can only be place in residential areas if they are put on lots that don't have houses, such as churches, community centers or schools. But the design of many Sunnyvale neighborhoods--a large group of houses surrounding a central non-residential structure such as a school or church--complicates the matter.

Recent discussions about a potential cell tower at the Fairbrae Swim and Racquet Club at Hollenbeck and Sheraton avenues illustrate the complications. Cingular Wireless radio engineers found a coverage gap--where calls were being lost or not connecting at all--a block north of the swim club, but because all the lots had homes on them, the second-best option was on the northwest corner of the swim club's property.

The proposed tower--a tall, thin pole--would have been disguised as an Italian cypress tree to better blend in with the surrounding foliage, but Cingular could not place it in the most strategic spot because of municipal code.

Sunnyvale code requires that for every foot a tower is tall, it must be two feet from the neighboring property lines. So plans had to be redrawn. Cingular's new plan for a 52-foot pole on the club's tennis courts will go to the planning commission sometime this winter. Ennis--the project manager for Cingular--says even then, the tower just barely meets the needs of the radio engineers and will only minimally serve the area.

The city can only step in and limit where companies place their towers when the companies violate zoning restrictions--which focus mainly on setbacks and visual impact.

Sunnyvale planning officer Trudi Ryan, whose office handles telecommunications applications, says that federal law only allows cities to dictate where towers go depending on zoning and aesthetics.

"The government wants to ensure that that all communities are treating these facilities and companies equally," she says.

Sunnyvale municipal code 19.54 says that the goal is to comply with the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996, which promotes the advancement and improvement of the cities' wireless communication networks, while protecting the city and its residents from blight and other problems that may arise.

On Jan. 11, 2005, the Sunnyvale City Council approved an appeal of an earlier planning commission decision, and stopped the installation of a cell tower disguised as a cross on the St. Luke's Lutheran Church property. The council said the tower presented too much of an unnecessary blight to the neighbors and that adequate alternative sites had not been researched.

Chris Rosenthal was among the neighbors who fought the St. Luke's tower. Rosenthal continues to follow cell phone issues in Sunnyvale because he is concerned about the long-term effects of such installations.

"My biggest concern is that I think the technology has gotten ahead of the laws, and we need to look at how we're going to protect the people who live around the towers," he says.

Rosenthal says he is most concerned about the health effects of tower radiation and their potential effect on property values.

Ennis--who has worked on 25 telecommunication projects in Sunnyvale alone--says the FCC has deemed the towers to be safe, and he says that the amount of power put out by the towers pales in comparison to the signals used by FM radio stations. Ennis says the only unsafe area around a telecommunications structure is within seven feet of the antenna itself, but since the units are mounted on top of tall buildings or towers, that is not a problem for residents.

Antennas must be mounted high because they rely on line-of-sight communication with each other to form networks. If trees or buildings block signals, the network will fail. If towers are built, they often have to be 50 or more feet tall, to "see" over the top of Sunnyvale's "urban forest" of 37,000 trees.

But those tall towers, while protecting residents from radiation, can also block scenic views, and Rosenthal worries that property values, which, on average, hover about $500,000 in the South Bay, could suffer as a result.

"If we get in a scenario where suddenly the housing supply outweighs the demand, and people begin to pick and chose where they live, I think people would chose not to live around towers," he says.

Others disagree. Ennis says most people who purchase homes in Sunnyvale are "bandwidth buyers."

"If you look at the profile of people buying houses around here, they're the kind of people who are going to want this bandwidth," Ennis says.

Rosenthal says he doesn't think "bandwidth buyers" are a viable part of the population and that phone reception is not high on most homebuyers' list of concerns.

Regardless of the concerns, the demand for reception is growing. According to a Sept. 30, 2005, FCC report on competition in the wireless industry, the number of wireless users increased by more than 24 million people in 2004. The FCC estimates that 62 percent of the nation's residents use some form of mobile communications.

Ennis says that eventually, a saturation point will be reached when all possible networks are in place and there is no room for new units. At that point, providers will begin upgrading existing sites. Currently, one unit can handle around 90 calls at a time, but many towers have multiple units on them.

Ennis also says that if the current state of consolidation continues, there may be less of a need for the high number of towers because the providers will merge, as Cingular Wireless and AT&T did.