Those towers still have ugly looking antennas on them; they're just too high to really be noticeable on the ground. [0] But for modern cell networks, you don't

Those towers still have ugly looking antennas on them; they're just too high to really be noticeable on the ground. [0] But for modern cell networks, you don't really want very tall towers. Taller towers mean they pick up the UHF radios from further and further away. You can realistically only carry the same number of subscribers per cell, so to support more users you're going to want to have more but smaller cells. In even medium density areas, you want your antenna elements closer to the ground to have smaller cells. Giant tall towers make sense when you're trying to broadcast or receive signals in a large area. They make sense for television or commercial radio or emergency services VHF/UHF radios. However, that's totally unlike modern cell networks today. And even then a lot of emergency services radio systems are going for more of a distributed network of antennas throughout the city instead of just a single giant tower. [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Olympiaturm%2C_M%C3%BAnich%2C_Alemania_2012-04-28%2C_DD_21.JPG/800px-Olympiaturm%2C_M%C3%BAnich%2C_Alemania_2012-04-28%2C_DD_21.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Ol...