A Perfect Start

Nobody disagrees that a new tower to improve cellular service, and emergency radio communications, in Springs and parts of Northwest Woods is not just a necessity, it’s long overdue. With that in mind, East Hampton Town officials have the right idea with a plan for a 185-foot-tall monopole to be installed on town-owned land between Norfolk and Crandall streets, one that could allow three cellphone providers room, along with meeting all the town’s emergency needs.

It’s bitter medicine for the Springs Fire Department, which had installed a 150-foot tower at its station six years ago. But that structure was never used, as it immediately became tied up in a legal battle over its approval, and now it’s mostly obsolete for its primary purpose, as the town’s new emergency communications system isn’t compatible.

There is money to be made in helping to sew up the holes in the cellular blanket — and there are plenty of those throughout East Hampton Town. Perhaps at some point the Springs FD tower can still be utilized by cellular providers, if not for its original purpose as an emergency radio link. That will mean a resolution of the legal battle, and a few other hurdles.

For now, the town-owned land is a perfect site for a monopole, mostly because of the buffer it offers from neighboring structures. It’s exactly the kind of site that can bring a quick turn-around — unlike the Springs FD site.

It’s important to emphasize, though, that the new tower should be just the start. East Hampton Town has hired City-Scape, a consultant, to help draft a master plan designed to identify new sites for towers throughout the town to improve coverage. The town would like to see a few taller spires that would be able to cluster more companies on them, which would reduce the number and meet the growing need without limiting access to just a few companies.

But with the onset of 5G technology, the need to expand the infrastructure likely is understated. One Tennessee company, Vertical Consultants, notes that there are about 300,000 cell tower sites across the country, but the new 5G system will require almost another 1 million. “5G is a complicated technology, but one of the primary reasons that 5G can provide the benefits it is expected to garner for users is due to the ‘density’ of the wireless networks that will be established,” the company says.

Despite the litigious acrimony surrounding the fire department’s tower, there could well be an opportunity there to fit it into the town’s larger cell tower plans. No matter how many town-owned towers are erected, there seems to be plenty of room to include smaller, supplemental structures, such as the one already built at the fire station. And as the technology changes to weave a better quilt of coverage, with signals capable of carrying larger and larger amounts of data. As an iPhone will tell you, a three-minute song streamed at high quality uses 6 MB of data; with lossless streaming now offered by Apple Music, that goes up to 36 MB — and high-resolution lossless is 145 MB, more than 24 times the data delivered.

The simplest point: For East Hampton, the future of cellular isn’t just about height, it’s about width of coverage as well. This tower is a good anchor, but it should be considered the start of a future plan rather than any kind of solution on its own.