Worried about poor cellphone reception in parts of town, Chilmark town officials are calling on cellular companies to beef up their infrastructure. 

The select board held a meeting with representatives from Verizon and American Tower Company Wednesday and asked the two companies to work together to improve service.

“[We’re] asking them to circle up and take into account what they heard today and integrate public comment we had over the course of the late summer and early fall, related to service that is inadequate to meet public safety expectations, and come up with a way to bridge us to a more robust solution,” select board member Matt Poole said. 

The town received several letters from residents earlier this year outlining how the poor cell phone reception could cut off the town’s elderly population from medical help, especially as people stop using landlines. Some places throughout the up-Island community have little to no service, including sections of Middle Road, Tabor House Road and North Road. 

“It got to the point where even our EMS  and our police departments were having trouble getting what they needed,” select board member Jeffrey Maida said. “It’s beyond just the citizens not being able to get what they want. But now it becomes a safety issue when our fire and police and EMTs can’t count on it.”

The select board will hold a public hearing on Jan. 6 where Verizon will present an application to erect its own nodes, rather than use America Tower Company’s system. 

“We are currently sharing nodes on the ATC distributed antenna system, and our goal is to have our own nodes out there so we can control the network more, have more capacity and to change as technology changes,” Verizon representative Sean Conway said.  

About 15 years ago, there was a plan to install a larger macro tower in Chilmark, but the idea was rejected by the voters, leading to the more patchy antenna system where antennas are placed atop utility poles in one mile increments along town roads.

But that system is antiquated, according to American Town Company sales manager Derek Hastings.  

“When this was designed, it was a voice network primarily, and now we’re using it for data,” he said. “The network that exists today... wasn’t built to do what it’s being asked.” 

American Tower is designing a plan where it would involve only AT&T and T-Mobile, according to Mr. Hastings. Budget and zoning restrictions would still have to be ironed out. 

“What we want to do is to modernize, bring everything in the highest concentrated areas up to a common level for all carriers, and then expand as needed into certain areas again, when we have budget alignment and zoning approval,” he said. 

Verizon is itching to improve service for their customers and is ready to go as soon as they get the green light from the town. 

“We’ve been contacted by local municipalities, we’ve been contacted by the state, we’ve been contacted by all sorts of people to improve our network down here,” Mr. Conway said.  “It’s a big goal of ours. We are ready to build down here. If we got approvals, we would be ready to go, hopefully by next summer, with those new nodes.” 

Though there is no immediate interest in installing a macro tower, the select board wants to take a step forward as quickly as possible.  

“We may never reach everywhere, so to me, any improvement is improvement,” Mr. Maida said.