Cell service on the eastern side of New Canaan stands to improve in early 2015, officials say.
The tower installed on Silver Hill Hospital’s campus likely will go live in the first quarter of next year, “at least according to AT&T,” Utilities Commission member Tom Tesluk said at the group’s meeting Monday night, held in the Sturgess Room at the New Canaan Nature Center.
The timing at Silver Hill is important to the commission, in part, because the group is overseeing data collection through a “drive test” of town roads that has seen a specially outfitted vehicle record cell strength on a street-by-street basis, providing New Canaan with site-specific data that it’s never had before.
That test is essentially finished and a draft map is in the works, Tesluk said, though there’s an open question about whether some areas—the south, southeast and perhaps northeast parts of town—ought to be re-tested once the tower at Silver Hill and a second planned tower, for the Norwalk Armory site, go live.
Tesluk cautioned that it may take a while for the Armory tower to go up.
“We have to keep them in mind that it took them six years to get the Silver Hill site to where it is today, and I would hate to be discussing the same thing about the Armory site,” he said.
Instead, Tesluk said, New Canaan should get the study in its hands now, re-test once the tower at Silver Hill starts sending its signal, and use predictive analysis to figure out how the Armory tower will further bolster cell service here, and just how.
The town approved $29,000 for the drive test and study back in April, about two weeks after Silver Hill announced that work was to begin on cell tower installation on the psychiatric hospital’s campus.