East Hampton Town's overtaxed wireless communications infrastructure, further stressed by last year's influx of "Covid refugees" from New York City, can be improved with the strategic siting of new facilities of various types, a wireless consulting firm told the town board on Tuesday.
In a presentation at the board's work session, representatives of CityScape Consultants, which helps local governments navigate the complexities of wireless communications, presented a comprehensive explanation of the technology and how data-intensive applications such as streaming movies and social media, the proliferation of "smart" devices throughout modern life, and the pervasive abandonment of wired services such as land-line telephones and cable television burden wireless infrastructure.
Susan Rabold and Elizabeth Herington-Smith described their review of the town's wireless communications infrastructure and efforts to identify and address coverage gaps and update pertinent sections of the zoning code, which were last modified in 2003.
"Now that we're needing to have more bandwidth because the apps that we use put a lot of capacity strain on the existing network," Ms. Rabold said, "the industry is going to start coming out with small wireless facilities," installations less than 50 feet tall with smaller antennae than on larger freestanding installations like "macro" towers, such as lattice towers and monopoles, and "base stations," concealed and non-concealed antennas affixed to structures like water towers, church steeples, and rooftops.
"If you don't amend your ordinance and put into place regulations," Ms. Rabold said, "you will have a plethora of these sites along your roadways . . . where you have different service providers installing their own pole in the right of way."
CityScape has assessed the town's wireless communications infrastructure, collecting data from the town, the Federal Communications Commission, and tower owners. The data presented is to help town officials plan where to site new wireless communication infrastructure.
The consultants introduced inventory maps showing 42 wireless facility sites. Of these, 29 are towers, 23 of them existing, three approved but yet to be built, two proposed and under review, and one condemned and to be removed. The remaining 13 are base stations, 10 of them existing, two approved but not yet built, and one proposed and under review. Twenty are on publicly owned land, 15 are on private property, four are inside rights of way, and three are within a utility easement.
But only 35 of the 42 sites have personal wireless equipment on them, Ms. Rabold said, and 31 of them are existing, approved, or proposed macro towers. Three small wireless facilities have been approved but are not yet built, and another is proposed and under review.
Color-coded maps, assuming the same provider at each site, depicted the strength of coverage throughout the town. "We do that because if there's an existing wireless provider on an existing tower or base station, theoretically they could have space there for another service provider," Ms. Rabold said. The objective, she said, is to answer the question, "if a service provider went on every single site, would you have any gaps?"
The answer is yes, as illustrated on maps showing three unidentified providers' coverage, each showing "superior" and "average" signal strength in roughly equal measure; scattered but significant areas of "acceptable" signal strength, defined as strong enough to operate outside but not in a vehicle or building, and smaller areas of no coverage, known as dead spots. "These are the gaps you need to look at solving for coverage," Ms. Rabold said.
And coverage is but one aspect of network design, she continued. "You also have capacity. When you have a large subscriber base using their handsets or their Wi-Fi on their laptops or other portable devices, this service area actually shrinks, and it can get almost nonexistent because that bandwidth gets used so much." A heat map for a single provider showed ratios of cell sites to its subscriber base, with sizable territories showing poor capacity.
"Serious capacity problems over the next 10 years" was the consultants' prediction.
The next step, they said, is to poll the community. They presented a draft poll and encouraged the board to circulate it. The consultants will tally the responses and use the compiled data to guide the drafting of code changes. The draft poll includes hamlet of residence and employment, respondents' wireless service provider, the number of wireless devices in a household, assessment of network coverage at home, at work, and when traveling in the town, and reliance on mobile devices. Also asked are the importance of connectivity versus visual impact of infrastructure and respondents' level of concern about the safety of wireless facilities. A respondent's name and email address would be optional.
"This information, we're hopeful, will help guide the structure of your ordinance," Ms. Rabold said. "Once we have all that information we will put it together and provide you a draft document of the wireless master plan, and then you can start playing around with all that information and deciding how you're going to use it in your community."
"We look forward to polling the community," said Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, who said that residents would be encouraged to respond, "so we have a better idea as to what the community wishes in terms of wireless services moving forward."
