Closing the Gap to Connect the Catskills

Task Force Recommendations Would Help Solve Poor Cellular Coverage in the Catskills

“I can’t search for the trail map, I have no internet.”

“I can’t call them to tell them the parking lot is full, I have no signal. And I can’t get online to search the address and hours of that shop we wanted to visit.”

“We’re lost in the woods and cannot call for help. I have no bars, no signal.”

By implementing recommendations issued by the Upstate Cellular Coverage Task Force (Task Force), the hope is to minimize the above refrains. In 2019, New York State established the Task Force, which brought together industry experts, community leaders, government officials, environmental constituencies, and other key stakeholders. Catskill Center Executive Director Jeff Senterman, a member of the Task Force, says the overall charge was to find ways to expand cellular service into New York's rural areas, especially the Catskill Park and the Adirondack Park. The Task Force issued a report/recommendations in September 2021.

Catskill Center’s Allison Dunne (AD): For starters, you were relying on federal maps that ended up to be inaccurate. In terms of the Catskills, where was the inaccuracy?

Jeff Senterman (JS): The inaccuracy really was because the federal data uses census tract information, so if any one place within a census tract shows service, then the whole area shows service. And when we looked in detail, it was clear that the boxes that were shaded in on the federal maps as having cell coverage maybe had service in one corner. [In consultation with the Task Force, an advisory team performed drive testing to measure cellular coverage along a subset of major roadways in the Adirondacks and Catskills.] The vehicle being driven along all these routes was equipped with sensors that could detect the three major carriers — AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. The sensors measured the strength or lack thereof of any signal and provided a more nuanced look at where there is service. And the maps clearly overestimated the amount of coverage. The areas with significant coverage gaps were even larger than the maps would have had you believe.

AD: What are some areas in the Catskills that are notorious for having horrible cell phone coverage?

JS: I think the most notorious for most folks is, once you pass Mount Tremper, on Route 28, heading west, you no longer have service until you reach Highmount, right at the Ulster County, Delaware County line. Then you'll have service through the Margaretville area, and then service once again, almost all the way to Delhi. So you have two very long stretches of highway that can be challenging in winter months. That was the biggest area that was shown. Also, the other area that was really shown to be lacking, and kind of surprised me actually, was Sullivan County, a large majority of the county, outside of any of the small, dense areas. The state Senator at the time from that area was really keen on understanding that because she was saying, you know, I drive around my district and I have no service but, if you look at these maps, it says there's service. So Route 28 is probably the most traveled route without any service, but many of the roadways throughout Sullivan County don't have service once you're beyond the boundaries of some of the more populated communities.

AD: On what recommendations do you all agree?

JS: So there were three main recommendations that came out of the report. One was, as you would expect, to encourage private investment, so encouraging the Verizons, AT&Ts and T-Mobiles and whoever else of the world to simply build more towers and invest more in the existing infrastructure to provide better signals. The next was streamlining regulatory permitting for cellular towers. We did work quite a bit on understanding the regulatory environment that cell providers work in, and what we discovered was they like certainty. In New York, you have to go to the municipality and apply for your permit, and each municipality has its own process. So what you might do on one side of the Catskills could be completely different than what you do on the other side, so providers never really know what they're getting into until they're getting into it. And then in terms of capital investment, the companies would much rather go where they know they can invest, and where they know there are users who will rely on their service. This is one reason why Upstate has always been a challenge. And what we actually found was that Upstate communities, outside of the Adirondack Park, were seen as more challenging for getting through the regulatory process. The Adirondacks have the Adirondack Park Agency, which provides a distinct process for the companies to follow; whereas, companies that come to a community here in the Catskills, where there is no Park Agency (and we’re not asking for one), could encounter a vastly different process in that community than in the one next door. One community’s process could last six months while another could take two years. And that uncertainty makes them not want to make that private investment.

AD: In the report, there's a cost breakdown to close the coverage gap. For Upstate, which includes the Adirondack and Catskill region, the estimated cost is $610 million ($313,000 per mile of new coverage). For the Catskills, the estimated cost is $73.7 million. What was agreed upon in terms of where these miles are? (In the report, the Catskill region has 1,916 road miles, 235 of which have no cellular coverage.)

JS: What the Task Force agreed upon was that we were looking at providing service on major roadways, and what we define as major roadways are federal highways, state highways, and then county roads and major town roads. The mileage that you see is the total mileage of those kinds of roads, so it's not a town road that branches off to another town road that's in the middle of nowhere; it's the major routes within each community

AD With the hope that they could reach those dead-end roads or the spur roads if the coverage is good enough.

JS: Right, exactly.

AD: The report’s done, so what's next? How do you get from report recommendations to building cell towers or getting the technology there to provide coverage? Are we talking years?

JS: I think for all of Upstate, we're talking years. It will be a process. The third major recommendation in the report is looking at ways to incentivize development of cellular service in the Upstate rural areas. So it’s what kind of subsidies or actions could New York state take to incentivize AT&T or Verizon to go through the permitting process and put a tower here or there to increase service in an area where, at first glance, they wouldn't necessarily work. Our opportunity to advance the recommendations of the Task Force lies with New York state. The legislature and governor have started their budget process.There were legislators involved on the Task Force who are very interested in expanding cellular service within their districts. And I think that for groups that are interested in expanding cellular service, like the Catskill Center, this will be something that we need to be talking to legislators about and trying to find ways to incentivize (I don't exactly know what the incentivization would look like, it's kind of more for the legislature to say), whether it's providing subsidies or pre-permitting sites, or whatever else. We need to find a way in the state budget to fund these efforts. I think that to cover every single mile that was identified in the report will be a multi-year process.That said, the other good thing that we have going for us is that the $1 trillion federal infrastructure bill President Biden signed in November includes billions of dollars for expanded broadband and wireless services. So we can expect that there'll be an infusion of federal cash coming into all the states, and in New York, specifically, to increase cellular service and broadband across the state, because one of the challenges is that you can't just install a tower at the top of a hill and flip a switch and have service. That tower needs to be connected to fiber broadband because the signal from the tower has to travel through the fiber to get into the regular telephone system. Both of them go hand in hand. And what we were finding was there wasn't always broadband available on some of the routes that are currently identified as not having cellular service. And so both broadband and cellular service would have to be expanded together through those areas.

AD: And what about the look of towers? That's something that some people are very sensitive about, particularly in natural resource-rich areas like the Catskills. And while they've come a long way, making some of the towers look like trees, they are not, obviously, natural structures.

JS: Yeah, some of them we call Frankenpines. You always hear that, oh, there's going to be this new technology that's going to make towers obsolete, and it’s just down the road, yet cellular service really depends on putting receivers and repeaters in places that have the ability to broadcast and receive signals across distances, and the way you do that is putting them on towers. There are really two major ways now that companies do that. There's a large tower on a high point that's able to broadcast over a huge area. And then there are towers that are strategically placed, that may only break treeline by a little bit. And they provide coverage in geographically tight areas because, really, the geography is what's limiting cellular service. If you had a completely flat place, you could put a few towers up and you would have cellular service for miles. But in places like the Adirondacks and the Catskills, you're surrounded by mountains, you’re in valleys. So you could put up the biggest tower you wanted but, if you're surrounded by mountains, cellular service is only going to be provided within that valley where that tower is; it’s not going to be able to go over the mountain to the other side. So the solutions we were looking at took into consideration that the Adirondacks and the Catskills are unique areas and part of the Forest Preserve and that much of the land cannot be developed. In the Adirondacks, one of the standards that the Adirondack Park Agency uses is “substantially invisible.” So the towers really can't be seen. There was talk of mixing the large towers with smaller towers, and even using telephone poles along highways, to provide very small cellular areas, but, to bring that cell service through, probably the most remote areas that are surrounded by protected lands wouldn't be able to be developed.

AD: Is there some other point you want to make about the report or say, the importance of the Task Force having come out with this report?

JS: We've reached the stage where cellular service is no longer a luxury. Years ago, we all thought of it as, isn't it cool to have a phone but, nowadays, so much of our lives, not just in terms of public safety, are really based on having access to cellular service. Here in the Catskills, people are at a disadvantage when it comes to public safety. We have had people that unfortunately have died because they were unable to get a signal and call for help, and they had an accident and passed away before help could get to them. We've had people get lost in the woods and, if cellular service was available, the search and rescue would have been much quicker. And just as importantly, so much of the visitor economy is based on people being able to use their cell phones, being able to access Google Maps to get somewhere.

And then looking for more ways to better move visitors around in Catskill Park and to address high use, that will depend on having cellular service so that visitors can connect with information about this. People can find out whether parking lots are full and find alternatives. Also, if you're a small business in the Catskills, you're advertising on these mobile applications, which can prove to be a real lifeblood for local businesses. Cellular service is necessary nowadays for so many things, so it's really important that we have good coverage without harming the natural resources that we have here in the Catskills. The Catskill Center sees this as a significant issue for the region in terms of public safety, but also in terms of the growth of our economy and the management of the Catskill Park.