Southampton Village Embarking on Plan To Expand and Improve Cell Service and Communications for First Responders

In order to better serve the community in times of utmost need, Southampton Village officials are embarking on an initiative to improve communications for first responders, and provide better cell service, particularly in the busy summer months, for village residents.

At a Village Board work session last week, Planning Board member Christian Picot gave a presentation outlining the public safety issues that have arisen from sometimes poor or spotty service for the Village Police and fire departments and ambulance corps, and cell phone coverage issues for residents, and he presented several solutions and a path forward for the village to address those issues.

Leadership from the police, fire and ambulance departments spoke briefly during the presentation about the problems they’ve faced.

Brian LaMonica of the Village Police said that members of the department are forced to re-log in to their computers whenever they are disconnected due to a service issue, which he said sometimes delays calls from going out. He also pointed out that the roof at the Village Police headquarters is at, and perhaps even a bit beyond, capacity when it comes to housing antennas, meaning new locations need to be found for the repeaters the departments use to power communications.

Ricky Fowler, an assistant chief with the Southampton Fire Department — which covers not only the village but a large portion of Southampton outside of the village — said department members have been dealing with radio difficulties and trouble connecting in known dead spots, which means they sometimes have trouble communicating with dispatchers.

“We fall back on cellphones, but they’re spotty in those areas as well,” he said.

He said that installation of additional towers would help address the issues.

Chief Kyle McGuinness from the Southampton Village Volunteer Ambulance said the presence of only one repeater, at the top of Village Hall, is the “biggest Achilles heel we have,” adding that the single repeater does not provide enough coverage for every pager to go off, especially since most of the members don’t live near or inside of village boundaries.

The southwest portion of the village, and areas down by the beach are known for especially spotty coverage, they all said, and added the issue only gets worse in the summer. During those busy months, department members often need to access important personal information like gate codes and key locations when they’re sent out on a call. If they can’t log on to the computers in their vehicles to access that information from dispatch, and need to send the information out over radios or the scanner, it compromises information related to private residences.

Picot said that two macro towers are going up next year, one in North Sea by the transfer station and another at the Oakland docks, which could help alleviate some of the issues. He said that the carriers — AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile — have been “extremely receptive” to working with the village to find a solution.

The next step for the village is to update its code so it can effectively regulate and approve personal wireless service facilities, such as towers with nodes, that tower operators would set up. While there is a permitting process for the tower operators to construct the towers, Picot pointed out that they do not need a municipality’s permission to come into the community and install the towers, because of a 2018 FCC order allowing 5G deployment right-of-ways. Updating village code will allow the village to have some control over both the permitting process and aesthetics of towers and nodes that would be installed to broaden and improve coverage.

The village has scheduled a public hearing for January 11 for updating that code.

After the public hearing, the village would then need to issue an RFP for tower operators to install the towers. Picot explained that it will not cost the village money — he said the tower operators pay to install the towers, and then they in turn are paid by the carriers who then can use the nodes and towers to expand service.