East Hampton Plans Campaign To Bring Cellular Companies, Land Owners Together To Close Coverage Gaps

East Hampton Town plans to mount an “open for business” outreach campaign to cellular phone service providers this spring and summer in the hope of kick-starting the installation of more cellular facilities to help boost service around the town.

Consultants for the town recently completed an overhaul of the town’s wireless master plan, which said that as many as 10 new “macro” cellular towers will be needed to close many of the broad gaps in reliable cellular service across the town, as well as other small facilities in areas where even a new network or towers won’t reach.

But while the town oversees permitting approval for the facilities, it rarely has an opportunity to steer a new tower to be erected. So the Town Planning Department is crafting an outreach plan it hopes will generate new initiatives from the giant cellular companies.

“We want to say, ‘We’ve done the hard work, we’ve amended our code, we’ve updated our procedures and we’re open for business,’” Planning Director Jeremy Samuelson told the Town Board on Tuesday during a board work session at Town Hall. “And let them know that we’re extending an invitation for them to come into the community, and how we can support them in having an appropriate application be reviewed and approved to support cellular service in our town.”

Samuelson said the town will pen a letter to both the major cellular service providers as well as companies that build commercial cellular towers and then lease space to multiple providers, as well as to attorneys and consultants who regularly work with service or tower companies on facility proposals, in hopes of drumming up new proposals.

Along with the call to providers, the town proposal will also seek out property owners in areas identified as geographically strategic for the placement of both large cell towers and smaller network facilities to encourage “wireless partners” that the town would connect with cellular and tower companies to facilitate the installation of new antennas.

The town will be looking to both private commercial property owners and quasi-public institutions like schools or fire departments to be potential hosts for tower facilities — which would, of course, come with a financial reward for whoever controls the property.

“We’ll identify some of the locations where these needs are, which are described in the master plan, and say to these folks, ‘We’d like to have a conversation with you … so that you can be a part of the solution for the community,’” Samuelson said.

The campaign comes at the tail end of a now four-year process that began in 2020 when the town, bombarded with complaints about poor or nonexistent cell service even before the pandemic set off an explosion in demand, began a top-to-bottom revision of its regulatory approach to the creation of new cellular facilities, which had not been updated since 2004.

New federal guidelines that made closing cellular service gaps essentially mandatory conflicted with decades-old local codes, had led to rocky review processes for proposals that often landed in court and left the town in a daunting legal position.

“Picture what your phone looked like and what it did in 2004,” Samuelson said, harking to the world in which the town’s codes were crafted and cellular service was not the essential component of modern life it is now. “There was a lot of new case law — we had to get all of that cleaned up and it was a lot of work.”

The town hired consultants in 2021 who first steered an overhaul of the town codes that were out of date, so that regulatory impediments were smoothed over. They then undertook an extensive examination of the wireless service system in the region, mapped the cavernous gaps in service in areas like Springs and Northwest — where residents and emergency service agencies had been saying for years that public health was being left at risk — and laid out a catalog of what would be needed to spread coverage into those areas.

The consultants, Florida-based CityScape Consultants Inc., which specializes in helping municipalities craft modern cellular regulations, also conducted a public survey to gauge the concerns and priorities of the community. The survey, the consultants told the town, drew more response from residents than any they had ever done. Residents decried the state of cell service in many areas of the town and said, in overwhelming numbers, that reliable cellular service should be the top priority over concerns about aesthetics that had defined numerous fights over cell tower proposals in the past.

Cityscape presented the town with the draft wireless master plan last June that lays out the recommended approach to encouraging more cellular facilities to be installed throughout the town. It called for at least 10 new towers between 100 and 140 feet tall, and as many as 44 smaller facilities scattered throughout the region to help boost connectivity.

Progress has been made already. In the last two years, new towers have been erected in Wainscott, Northwest, Hither Hills and Springs. The new tower in Springs currently has AT&T and T-Mobile antennas up and running — with a notable absence of Verizon antennas [see related story] — and has boosted service in that area. The Hither Hills tower, which is on state land, has Verizon antennas and is expected to have AT&T soon, as well, bringing service to the Napeague Stretch.

“That’s going to be a good one,” said Eddie Schnell, the town’s chief communications technician. “Every time you drive from Montauk heading west, you’d be on the phone, and once you took the dip past the overlook you’d drop the call, guaranteed. So that [tower] should fix that problem.”

A new cellular tower in the woods behind the St. Peter’s Chapel in Springs — where AT&T says only a small tower will fill a localized gap — has been approved after a court settlement. A legal challenge from neighbors is still pending and even though building permits have been issued by the town, the company has not yet commenced construction.

New antennas have also been added to existing towers and other structures in Montauk, Amagansett and East Hampton, helping with some connectivity matters.

“We’re not just waiting for things to get better, there’s been a ton of work going on in the background,” Samuelson said.

The Town Board has yet to schedule a vote to officially adopt the master plan. The planning director on Tuesday encouraged them to do so, post haste.

“The goal here is to put us on a path toward owning complete cellular coverage through the town and local waters,” he said. “It’s time for the town to adopt the wireless master plan. Then we’ve got the real work to do.”