UPDATEThe most dangerous job in the country is now cell tower climber. These are the guys that climb up high on cell towers to install and maintain our nation’s mobile phone infrastructure.

Well, in the last two months, the profession has gotten even more deadly.

Since April 12, six men have fallen to their deaths working on cell towers in many different parts of the country.

Some experts believe it is the telecommunications industry’s rush to roll out a high-speed cellular phone technology called 3G that may be contributing to this out-of the-ordinary number of fatalities. Phone giant, AT&T has been scrambling to roll out the new system in hundreds of markets throughout the U.S. and has promised to have the system running by the end of this month.

But this upgrade in technology, which will mean all of us will benefit by faster mobile phone connections that will make it easier to surf the Internet from our phones, is coming at a horrendous cost.

On April 23, Mike F. Haynes, a cell tower employee with Overland Contracting Inc., fell 100 feet to his death from a tower near Natchez, Mississippi., and on May 16, Jonathan Guilford, 25, fell from a 200 foot tower while working on a At&T 3G project in Haubstadt, Indiana.

Clearly, such deaths are not unheard of in this industry, but this spate of falls “is unusual,” says Craig Lekutis, president of the online community for tower professionals Wireless Estimator.

The 3G roll-out schedule is ambitious, Lekutis says, and that could be contributing to the rise in deaths. Sometimes, foremen put extra pressure on workers to go faster, and unfortunately safety often suffers. The industry operates with such slim margins, every second counts when installing new systems, he adds.

In a Fortune online article on the deaths, AT&T officials denied that the 3G roll-out schedule had anything to do with the deaths:

A spokesman for AT&T Mobile confirms that Jonathan Guilford was working on a tower for an AT&T 3G network, but denies that his death or the others had anything to do with the June deadline. “That is a software upgrade,” says William Marks. “You go to each tower and use a laptop to perform the upgrade at the base station at the bottom of the tower. There is no need to climb towers.”

Marks acknowledges that AT&T is continuing to bring 3G networking to new markets in the U.S., work that involves building new towers and installing new antennas. But he says that this is part of the company’s broader 3G roll-out, and unrelated to any events in June.

On April 21, after the first two deaths on its projects, AT&T called for a construction stand down and issued an order to subcontractors that read, in part:

“AT&T … requires you to hold, at a minimum, a half-day safety refresher training course this week with all of your construction employees and subcontractors providing services for AT&T. Upon completion of the safety refresher training this week, AT&T expects that you will reinforce this training with additional random safety checks at the construction sites to ensure that appropriate safety measures are being used.”

AT&T’s Marks prefers to describe the order as a “refresher course,” rather than stand down. “We consider the safety of our contractors and our employees to be our first priority,” he says.

No matter who is to blame, workers need to get a reality check pronto!

I called the Occupational Health and Safety Administration last week to find out if the federal safety agency has launched an investigation into the deaths.

The spokeswoman at OHSA had her hands full on Friday when a crane fell in Manhattan and two workers were killed. She said she’d try to get back to me but I didn’t hold my breath. I am hoping to hear from her today because we need to get the word out there before more of these cell workers die.

These men, and a handful of women, that have the unbelievable courage to climb to such heights need to sit back and realize what really matters.

Cell workers are given the safety tools they need to keep safe. But too often when time constraints surface, “they just don’t practice 100 percent fall protection,” says Lekutis. They know one mistake could mean tragedy, but “in any profession people take short cuts.”

I know, we all get cocky on the job. The thinking is, “this can’t happen to me.”

But it can folks. Slow down!

UPDATE: Frankly, I’m disappointed with the response I’ve gotten from OSHA on this disturbing trend.

Here’s the reply from a spokeswoman there: “The Jackson area office is currently conducting in investigation into the death of an employee working on a cell tower in Natchez, MS. The Texas fatality is also currently under investigation by the San Antonio Area Office.”

As for putting out any safety and health bulletins to the industry so they can curtail any future deaths? Nope, nada. Nothing, even though industry observers have said this is an unusually high number of deaths.

The spokeswoman actually directed me to two old bulletins, one put out in 2004 and another from 1991. 1991?! Are they kidding?!

Here are the links just in case they may be useful. One here. The other here. I’m posting them because it doesn’t seem OSHA has the fire under them to get the word out on this pronto and maybe these will help somebody.