While searching for caches in and around town, one cannot help noticing the “disguised” cell phone towers that blend into the surrounding. When people started complaining about the unsightly towers popping up all over the Towns and Cities, the cellular companies decided to develop a more environmental friendly tower.
Did you know that Cell phone towers being disguised as trees, also known as clean solution masts, is the brainchild (co-inventor) of South African telecommunications engineer Ivo Lazic, and is now used worldwide to hide these unsightly towers.
In an interview with Ivo Lazic by financial mail, dated July 2006 he said.
"My colleague Aubrey Thomas and I wondered how we would solve the problem of ugly masts and angry people. I had about 200 palm trees in my garden in Kyalami and noticed they were a similar shape to the masts we were erecting," Lazic says. "When we first discussed making cellphone masts with glass fibre trunks and plastic leaves our contractors thought we were crazy." “Sixty days after the "palm trees" were invented, the first mast was erected in Durbanville, Cape Town. “We rolled out one after another; environmentalists and the authorities loved them." The towers have also been exported to Australia, Greece, Italy, Tahiti, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, among others. "We've developed trees to suit the different landscapes," Lazic says. For example, the Arabic date palm is exported to the Middle East and even comes with its own set of dates