Town officials on Tuesday approved a contract with a Seattle-based company for a long-awaited “street test” to understand cellular coverage in New Canaan.
The Board of Selectmen voted 3-0 at its regular meeting to approve the $32,500 contract with Ookla.
The vendor is the Utilities Commission’s preferred option for the test, the first step in obtaining clean, up-to-date, real-time data before decisions are made on the best ways to address coverage gaps.
Commission member Christa Kenin, who presented to the selectmen with Chair Rich Townsend, said the appointed body was attracted to Ookla because “they are able to truly mimic the consumer experience.”
“Other vendors that came forward to us, if you could imagine—I’m oversimplifying it— they would just have an antenna on their car and drive around, but that is just catching a signal,” Kenin said at the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference.
She continued: “What Ookla does is it is able to measure, is there a signal so can you initiate a call? And also voice and data will be tested in this. So can you initiate that… And I’m sure we’ve all experienced a dropped call in New Canaan driving around. So that’s very important.”
She added that at some point in the future, residents who download an app will be able to test signal strength from their own houses.
“And that’s important because what we’re proposing today is a street test,” Kenin said. “And some homes are a long ways from the street, especially in our two-acre and our four-acre zone. So we thought that was a really important component, to fortify the data that we will get from Ookla and also engage our citizens, which I think is another important piece of this. What we’d also like to propose is that when these maps are available, we make them available to the citizens and we can figure out with you guys the best way to do that.”
First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll voted 3-0 in favor of the contract. (Since the test will be performed this fiscal year, the Board of Finance will need to approve an allocation from a special projects fund.)
Referring to a prior “drive test” from one decade ago, Karl said, “This is a huge improvement over Centerline. We’re dealing with 2014 data. Just imagine, 10 years ago, we’re still looking at data that’s a decade old and now we’re going to have actual up-to-the-minute new data.”
The test itself will be conducted in June, when the trees have leaves on them to create what Kenin called “density.”
Murphy Carroll asked how long it will take to get the data turned around after the street test itself. Townsend said one to two weeks.
Murphy Carroll said, “This is great. As Christa said, we need data first and that’s what we’ve been sorely missing. Everyone just has their experiences, but if you have the data and then you’re able to challenge other providers with what they represent as coverage versus really what it is, I think this is a huge improvement.”
Kenin said that Ookla also can collect data from specific times of day, such as “on a school line pickup at three o’clock in the afternoon.”
The selectmen also asked what type of report the town will get (maps and analytics), whether the report can be customized to specific locations and times of day (yes) and what the public can do to help (that part comes after the street test).
The street test and collection of clean data marks a distinctive break from the prior first selectman, who had effectively dissolved the Utilities Commission before taking residents by surprise two summers ago with a plan to install a cell tower behind West School.
Kenin opened the agenda item by reviewing the Commission’s work. Appointed last summer with a mission to “help ensure safe, reliable, and efficient utility services for both the residences and the businesses of New Canaan,” the Commission views its goal as “providing consistent and comprehensive cell coverage to all New Canaan residents,” Kenin said.
“And the tagline we’ve been using is ‘data first, solution second,’ because I know there’s been a lot of collective anxiety in the community in the last year or two or three about, what does the solution look like?” she continued. “And we want to assure everyone our focus, this is a data fact gathering mission at the moment. So we just want to put that out there loud and clear for everyone to appreciate.”
The Commission also plans to develop “a full inventory of the hardware that we currently have in town,” she added.
“Every little whip and tower and what have you on every building,” Kenin said. “We’d like to assess what we have in terms of hardware as well. And we want to establish a direct communication link with each of the cell providers as well as the hardware provider equipment providers, if you will. And then ultimately develop a network coverage strategy. No one really knows what that looks like at the moment.”
Much of the Commission’s work in the past several months has involved vetting Ookla versus another prospective vendor in V-Comm, favored by the prior administration.
“Ultimately they did not prevail in our minds,” she said.
Townsend noted that V-Comm responded to the RFP with a lower bid ($13,950), but “it was a slightly different test, and not necessarily to the standard that the Commission is looking to perform or isn’t needed by the town.”
“And the Commission itself reviewed both,” he said. “We had interviews with both parties. They were able to present how they were going to perform their tests. And it was unanimously determined that Ookla was the best fit for the town and the needs of the town itself.”
Kenin said that the Commission also has contacted the Connecticut Siting Council to ask for the maps that the carriers have provided.
“Who knows if they’re right or not, but that’s why this is an important study to do, because we can confirm that coverage,” she said. “And if there are gaps in certain areas, we can push back—through the Siting Council, we would do it, not through the carriers, because we think we’ll get a better response if they’re reaching out to the carriers, not us. But we expect the current maps that the carriers have provided to the Connecticut Siting Council by mid April. So we’ll have all of this information coming together this spring.”
The Commission also has resolved to keep abreast of technological developments in cellular coverage by inviting industry experts to address the body on a regular, ongoing basis.
“People love to throw around ‘Why aren’t we waiting for satellite or 5G?’ or whatever it is, but we want some industry experts to come in and talk to us about, one, how feasible that technology is,” she said. “And two, what is the cost of that? And then at some point we can assess if that is appropriate for our town. And if the taxpayers have that kind of an appetite, because I imagine those technologies are quite expensive.”
Townsend said that nobody is sure what hardware is already in New Canaan “because it doesn’t have to come through the town to get put up on a telephone pole.”
“It goes to a Siting Council in Hartford, all of these antennas that go on buildings, et cetera, we may or may not know, which is why it really is important to get an inventory of where this stuff comes from,” he said. “And one of the vectors of how we will try and increase coverage is if we know where it’s coming from and who owns it, can we talk them into doing something bigger and better, and give them more coverage out of that spot.”
A huge thanks to the Utilities Commission for doing the thorough work that should have always been done on this issue. I look forward to hearing more as this progresses.