Family left ‘powerless’ over battle to stop cellphone tower outside their home

For years, the view from Kevin McKillop’s home has been trees, sunshine and birds. Now it is set to be blocked by a 15.5-metre-tall mobile phone tower.

McKillop and his family have been thrust into an ongoing battle with New Zealand telecommunications company Spark and its contractor, Connexa.

The McKillops have spent months fighting plans to install the tower and a 1.8-metre-tall cabinet on the nature strip outside their property in Pāpāmoa, near Tauranga.

“We are powerless,” his son, Reuben McKillop, told Stuff NZ.

In a bid to stop the project, the family successfully secured local council approval for a new driveway at the site, but they fear the tower will simply be shifted nearby instead of abandoned entirely.

They argue there are many more suitable locations in the area, including public land and commercial areas that should be used instead.

“Why do we have to pull the short straw?” Reuben told the media outlet.

Connexa, which manages thousands of mobile sites across New Zealand, claims multiple locations were considered before they landed on a site near the McKillop family home.

The company said it was the most suitable option to improve network performance and capacity in the area, which is increasingly in need of more mobile services, Stuff NZ reported.

Connexa also noted that experience shows telecommunications infrastructure generally becomes accepted as part of the streetscape once constructed.

The family remains unconvinced and says this fight is about more than one tower or one street.

For now, they will continue to challenge the proposal, hoping the tower can be relocated before construction begins. They have a meeting with Connexa on Friday with the support of local MP Tom Rutherford.

“It is only a matter of time until someone else gets that letter in the mail and it’s their front lawn,” Reuben said.

He’s not wrong.

Major infrastructure projects are increasingly interfering with homeowners, most of whom are determined to protect their neighbourhoods.

Earlier this year, a family in the US state of Georgia claimed they could lose their home to make way for power infrastructure linked to the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence data centres.

Single mother Angela Hall said the land acquisition plans threatened the home she had spent decades building toward, devastating her family.

Globally, once-rural communities like parts of Georgia are being changed by data centre developments in the race to build the infrastructure needed to power AI tools and cloud computing systems.