Haddonfield residents have been asked for input on the development of a new telecommunications master plan and placement of macro or small wireless facilities that will provide cell service.
Project Manager Susan Rabold, of CityScape Consultants Inc., gave an overview on June 5 of the borough’s current telecommunications infrastructure to educate residents on how that infrastructure affects cell service.
The presentation was part of an ongoing effort to improve and create a new telecommunications master plan for 2024 that will help regulate wireless facilities residents would or would not like to see.
Haddonfield currently has three non-concealed sites that include two base stations and one tower. One base station is on private property, one is on the railroad – and does not contribute to personal cell use, Rabold explained – and one is on public property atop a water tower that will be removed sometime in the next two years.
“The utility company, AmericanWater, owns that water tank and they have decommissioned that water tank,” Rabold said. “They’re not using it anymore, so rather than leave it there, as a location for the antenna, they want to remove it because it’s a liability. They’re not going to maintain it anymore.”
The borough awaits a response from AmericanWater to clarify whether the tower will come down in 2024 or 2025, but when it happens, residents within that coverage area may experience a lack of service unless their providers find a new location.
Rabold’s presentation focused on coverage gaps faced by Haddonfield residents and what improvement could look like using different blends of towers. For instance, the same gaps could be covered by using 13 macrocells that are about 100 feet, 47 small cells at about 25 feet, or a blend of seven macro cells and 18 small cells.
“We’ve demonstrated how you can get the same footprint from both types of facilities; it’s really up to the communities,” she noted. “There are some communities that really want macro cells because they don’t want all this infrastructure in their right of way. And then there are other communities that say ‘We do not want macrocells, we want as many small wireless facilities as they can put in.’ (The choice) really is community driven.”
Rabold also clarified that existing maps point not to concrete locations where service providers will plant cell towers or bases, but rather to an ideal for the best coverage of gaps.
Whether or not a provider wants to offer its service in town is up to that provider. The guidelines being created are meant to set a standard for what the borough deems acceptable and streamline the approval process for service. They will guide, but not dictate, where facilities can go, Rabold added.
“You can encourage the use of public property, but you cannot mandate that they go on public property,” she pointed out. “You do that by identifying the property, you pre-design the site to be something that the community can support and then you vet that through your master plan.”
If a service provider requests something outside of the standards, it will have to go through the public process and get more community input. The diagrams and maps shown are looking at a 10-year projection, Rabold said, so residents should not expect to get this kind of work done in a year.
To see the past presentations on telecommunications infrastructure, or to participate in a survey, visit https://www.haddonfieldnj.org/archive_2022.php.
