Telecom installed the tower on airport-mixed use zone land, owned by Shotover Park, last week. It followed certificate of compliance approval from Lakes Environmental for the permitted activity under the district plan.
Mr Porter said the site on the vacant grassed area on Lucas Pl was Telecom's preferred site.
"I can say while it may look like it's in a prominent position, we have actually filed a subdivision plan for that land. It's actually on the corner of one of the lots of land and it integrates very well with the development that's proposed.
"It may look prominent now, but it won't look prominent in another year or so as buildings come up."
Mr Porter said "their tenancy integrates and will be landscaped, so it will just look like another pole in a developed area".
Telecom said it had installed the tower to increase mobile network capacity and improve performance in the Frankton area and across the Frankton Arm, as more customers were now using smartphone and high speed mobile data devices.
Telecom corporate communications consultant Stephanie Fergusson, of Auckland, said the company considered customer demand, geography and environment, location in relation to community facilities, availability of land and the way the network was configured, when searching for suitable mobile site locations.
Advice from the council planners was heeded as part of the approvals process, Ms Fergusson said.
"Our site investigations focused on the area of land on and around Queenstown Airport, which our engineers identified as the area where the site would need to be located to provide improved services," she said.
"We entered into discussions with various parties before finding a landowner willing to have the site located on their land."
Queenstown Airport Corporation chief executive Steve Sanderson said: "We did make an offer to put [the site] on our car park, but they chose that [Shotover Park] site."
