A full-page advertisement in last week's East Hampton Star decrying "horrible, non-existent cell phone service" in some parts of East Hampton was followed by both a statement from Town Hall and a breathless report in The New York Post on "the 'ugly' fight to get better cell service in the Hamptons."
The advertisement, paid for by an entity called Citizens for Better Cell Phone Coverage, presents scenarios including a person having a heart attack while driving in Wainscott and being unable to call for help. "The lack of cell phone coverage in the Wainscott area is not just annoying and inconvenient it's downright dangerous" according to the ad, which The Post said was funded by the investor Alan Patricof and with copy written by Jerry Della Femina. It asks readers to contact Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc or Jodi Walker, the planning board's secretary, "and tell them that we need a new tower now."
Mr. Van Scoyoc spoke about the advertisement at the town board's meeting on Tuesday, acknowledging that "we've historically had certain areas within town where there were dead zones and poor coverage." That condition worsens with the influx of summer residents and visitors, he said, and has deteriorated further since the Covid-19 pandemic brought second-home owners to town months earlier than usual, many of them working remotely. "The bandwidth across all of that infrastructure, whether it be wireless communications or over our internet provider, Altice Ñ those systems have become quite overloaded," he said. "They just don't have the capacity."
The town board voted on July 2 to retain John Huber, an attorney with extensive experience with cellular communications, to review and revise the town code and the process by which applications for cellular communications infrastructure are reviewed. On Aug. 4, representatives from Verizon Wireless pitched the board on a temporary cellular tower on town-owned property off Stephen Hand's Path in East Hampton that, they said, would alleviate "substantial dead zones" in the area and accommodate the increase in wireless traffic.
On Aug. 6, the board voted to issue a request for proposals for wireless telecommunication facility consulting services, which, Mr. Van Scoyoc said on Tuesday, will "help advise the town as to just how to go about developing a comprehensive cellular coverage plan." East Hampton Village has expressed interest in partnering with the town on the topic, he said.
The board understands that the town's cellular communications code needs an update, he said, as it "does not reflect all the recent [Federal Communications Commission] regulation changes."
A number of projects that are pending or under construction will improve wireless service, he said. Among them are towers or antennas at sites including the Montauk Community Church, the new fire department substation in Northwest Woods, and a site on Wainscott Northwest Road near the Police Department's headquarters.
"We understand with this huge influx and increase of usage, that the existing infrastructure has been put together piecemeal, at best, and does not serve the number of people who are currently here and using data at unprecedented levels" due to the pandemic, Mr. Van Scoyoc said. "So we ask for the public's patience as we work to improve communications. We understand how frustrating that can be for those who work, and how potentially dangerous it could be, in an emergency situation, to not have coverage."
