Wireless service in Sag Harbor Village would see a significant upgrade with the addition of two macro cell sites, which are typically found on towers, and at least four micro towers, or small wireless facilities, a consultant told the village board on Aug. 12.
The village hired CityScape Consultants, which has been engaged by nearby municipalities including East Hampton Town, to develop a wireless master plan. It is charged with assessing the community’s characteristics and wireless infrastructure, and then creating maps, identifying coverage gaps, making recommendations, and proposing and finalizing a draft master plan.
The consultant looks at existing infrastructure within the municipality’s geographic boundary plus a one-mile perimeter, Susan Rabold of CityScape told the board. When there are sites within that one-mile perimeter, they typically have a propagation, or successful signal, pattern that carries over into the jurisdictional boundary, “but you don’t have a lot of wireless infrastructure near you. The only facilities that we found and identified are in your jurisdictional boundary.”
Existing towers within that boundary are the 165-foot-tall radio tower on WLNG’s property and the 120-foot-tall tower at the Fire Department on Brick Kiln Road. Neither hosts commercial wireless service providers, Ms. Rabold said, but CityScape looks at existing tower facilities to determine whether they could be retrofitted or replaced to accommodate more wireless infrastructure.
In speaking with Mayor Thomas Gardella, she said, “there appears to be some interest . . . to change out the tower and redesign your public safety fire station facility in the future.” The consultant also looked at replacing the WLNG tower. “They indicated that they do have plans to replace that tower,” she said, “and if it were replaced with a structurally comparable facility to support wireless infrastructure, and then if all the providers were to go on those two facilities,” coverage gaps would be largely eliminated.
This would be “a really great option,” Ms. Rabold said, precluding the need to find new tower sites. “By just redesigning and replacing the sites that you have, you can make great strides in filling in these gaps.”
There are also three existing base stations, which Ms. Rabold defined as antennae mounted on a structure that is not a tower. One is at the Municipal Building, another in the steeple at Christ Episcopal Church, and one on a water tower near the former Harbor Heights service station. All four wireless carriers — AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Dish Wireless, operating as Boost Wireless — are on the latter base station, but “it’s pretty low in elevation,” Ms. Rabold said. “For that reason, the propagation pattern doesn’t cover the entire village.” Only one carrier is represented on the other two base stations, she said.
Coverage could be further increased with “small wireless facilities,” or micro towers, usually no more than 50 feet tall and used to add capacity to a network, in approximately four locations. The goal of her presentation, Ms. Rabold said in answer to a question from the board’s Aidan Corish, was to illustrate the minimum number of small wireless facilities until CityScape hears from the community as to a preference between another macro cell site or more small wireless facilities. “We can definitely add more sites,” she said, “but we try and come in conservative until after we hear from the community, because if we . . . showed a whole bunch of these right away, it might really raise a ruckus.”
To that end, a community survey is the next step, Ms. Rabold said. It will ask if respondents are year round, seasonal, or nonresidents of the village, how they use wireless devices, and who their providers are. Respondents will be asked to rate the coverage where they live and work, and the importance of the quality of service. They will also be able to tell CityScape of areas in the village where their service is poor. “It’s like a test of accuracy on what we’re doing,” Ms. Rabold said of CityScape’s modeling.
The survey will depict examples of non-concealed towers, with respondents able to choose their preference, if any. Similar questions will be asked about small wireless facilities. Respondents will be asked if connectivity or aesthetics is of greater importance, if they support using village-owned or other public property, and if they know of private property that would be available for wireless infrastructure.
CityScape recommends that the survey run between two and four weeks.
