The Chilmark select board is asking the town’s planning board to consider options that would allow the installation of a large cell tower as the community struggles with poor cell service. 

The select board had a public hearing Tuesday to go over Verizon’s plans to install small cell nodes on existing utility poles in town. After concerns about other carriers and cluttered poles, the board voted to continue the hearing to Jan. 20, and submit a letter to the planning board for seeking a more holistic solution. 

“I’d like to get an understanding of whether a macro tower is worth talking about [and] what the process is,” said select board member Matt Poole. “I think we should also know what the full sort of game plan looks like and we don’t know tonight.”

Town officials started to hear concerns from residents this past summer over the lack of cell phone coverage that could lead to public safety gaps. 

To deal with the problem, Verizon proposed a total of 23 new nodes, 14 of which would go on poles and the remaining nine would be along state roads.

“There’s been structural analyses done on each of these by engineers, by structural engineers, to demonstrate that the pole can hold this equipment,” Verizon representative Michael Giaimo said at the meeting. “That’s how we know we don’t have to have replacement poles for these installations.” 

Currently, cell service is run on a distributed antenna system (DAS). American Tower Company oversees that system. The plan that Verizon presented would break them away from the DAS system that currently holds service from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.  

“What’s going on out there, on that DAS, we are limited as to what kind of capacity and coverage we can get, because all three carriers are sharing the same antenna and the same radios,” Verizon representative Sean Conway said. “So now we go through with our own antenna, our own radios. We can handle every single person that’s going to attach that thing, rather than it splitting between the three of us.” 

The DAS system was implemented after residents voted against constructing a macro tower approximately 15 years ago.

Board members were hesitant, citing concerns with crowding poles and favoring residents with one carrier over another.  

“I’m not in favor of giving anybody a so-called monopoly...I would prefer that all three carriers try to work with American Tower and come together to do something,” select board member Jeffrey Maida said. “But Verizon seems to be trying to do something. I don’t know if this is the answer to what we’re looking for. I would prefer not to see stuff all over the poles myself. I think there’s other solutions.”