I'm probably too young to be a good curmudgeon, but I nonetheless subscribe to Ed Abbey's view of wilderness: it doesn't need to be safe and accessible for everybody. Put ramps and roads and signs and cell phones into our cities, but please, leave them out of the backcountry. Sure they make it safer, but the element of risk is part of what defines the outdoors, and part of what draws me to it.
The park would like to make clear that this project will not expand the existing footprint of cell coverage out of developed areas of the park. With the exception of the new cellular tower near Canyon Village, this project is intended to improve the backhaul capacity of the existing cellular network. The project will not increase the network's footprint, but will improve service in the Canyon developed area (which is in the shadow of coverage from Mount Washburn). The new systems on the Mount Washburn Tower will not change the existing coverage area in the park.
To your question about PEER's statement that "Yellowstone also appears to be violating National Park Service policy requiring coverage maps "showing the 'before' and 'after' service levels and signal strength for" every cell tower proposal (per NPS Reference Manual 53). The Park not only ignored this requirement but tried to hide the coverage maps it possessed. It has yet to produce maps for three of its five towers.
The reason the park did not provide coverage maps for 3 of the towers is that they are part of cellular companies' backhaul infrastructure for coverage in the park. In other words, they do not provide cellular service to customers. Those towers provide a link between existing cell towers and the rest of the nation's cellular/data infrastructure. We provided maps for the two towers that will provide cell coverage as part of this project.
To your question about the maintenance backlog, the park is not paying for construction on these projects. Cell service providers are. Yellowstone is going to recover 100% of the administrative costs associated with processing these requests from the companies that submitted them.
Speaking to PEER's claim that we're ignoring National Park Service protocols, Bret De Young, Yellowstone's Supervisory Telecommunications Specialist, said "We're not ignoring the plan. Every decision about wireless telecommunication is evaluated to make sure it is consistent with park planning documents." He stated that "All wireless communication proposals are evaluated by the wireless committee and the superintendent to decide whether they should be approved."