What is that "faster-than-light propagation of non-information" they mention observing?
Now with this setup if you dial down activation time so that it is smaller then 53.7 microseconds [0] next tower will not be able to receive any communication from previous tower on when to activate, signal would just not travel fast enough. Activations of towers would need to be scheduled. Now consider an observer looking at Earth with a powerful telescope from a significant distance. To him there would be an object emitting light that is moving around earth faster than light.
[0] 10(miles towers apart) / 186282(light speed in miles/second in vacuum)= ~0.0000537 seconds = 53.7 microseconds
They just seem to be real-time-coordinated from outside because of the way the cron jobs are firing.