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There are areas of Curdsville where you just don’t try to make a call. The same goes for Sheppards, especially near U.S. Highway 15. Cell service in parts of those areas just doesn’t work. The Buckingham County Planning Commission took a step toward solving that problem during their Monday, June 26 meeting, by approving a cell tower application. But officials warned more will be needed. 

The goal here, according to the application, is to improve in-building cell coverage in both Sheppards and Curdsville. It’s also designed to improve in-vehicle coverage along U.S. Highway 15 and Francisco Road. This tower would go up about 695 feet west of the intersection of Holland Road and U.S. Highway 15 in Sheppards. 

U.S. Cellular officials said in the application they’re trying to fill gaps in the area. The problem, they added, is new technology requires a different approach, one involving more cell towers than before. Back in the older days, you were seeing them 15-20 miles apart. Now you’re seeing them five miles apart. The old technology followed the contour of the land. The new technology is more of a straight line technology, they said. 

Questioning cell service changes

Planning commission members had issues with one part. They were caught off guard by how little changed in a before and after photo. That is, how little extra coverage was added in the estimate given by U.S. Cellular. Yes, coverage would extend several miles out. But they were expecting a much larger boost. The county’s consultants cautioned that they shouldn’t expect massive increases. Instead, they should be preparing for more towers. 

Buckingham County has a consulting firm, Cityscape, that they partner with to examine telecommunications contracts like this. Cityscape representative Ben Evans explained that more cell towers are needed because of how many people have phones now. 

“It’s driven by the industry. Back in the 1980s, very few people owned cell phones,” Evans said. “Carriers could put up a 400 ft. tower and it would cover a very large area. But any one facility is limited to how many connections it can handle at any one time. It’s a technical limitation that exists even today. Now when you increase the number of users, that 400 ft. tower will no longer do the job.” 

At a certain point, there are too many users for one tower to handle. That’s when calls start getting dropped. And so, that’s when a second tower has to be put up, and then a third and so on. 

“What we have to do is shrink the area one tower covers,” Evans said. 

Instead of one tower covering 30 miles, over time that dropped down to 20, then to 15 and now, cell towers rarely cover more than a five-mile range, he said. 

Cell tower fields?

“So we’ve got solar fields. Are we going to have cell tower fields now?” asked planning commission member Peter Kapuscinski. 

The answer, from both Cityscape and U.S. Cellular, was yes and no. 

Yes, more connections are going to be needed for better cell service. But it might not be done through towers much longer. 

Evans relayed that more and more cities are switching to putting cell transmitters on 40 ft. telephone poles. But to meet the signal strength needed, it would take literally a transmitter on telephone poles for every block. That’s in the future for Buckingham and other areas, however. For now, the focus is still on cell towers. And commission members agreed that more are needed. 

“Improvement in that area, in any manner, would benefit the residents and public safety,” said planning commission member Ashley Shumaker. 

The other members agreed, unanimously voting to approve the proposed tower at 211 Holland Road and send it on to Buckingham County supervisors, where it’ll get a final vote.