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Sudbury is known for its green space, its history and its schools, among many other wonderful things. One thing the town isn’t known for is wireless coverage. Online community forums are frequently peppered with requests for recommendations on cell carriers, and there’s never a clear winner in the comments. So what exactly is going on with cell coverage in Sudbury?
The main issue appears to be a combination of existing cell sites, land, topography and regulations. The wireless carriers all suffer from a mixture of having too few cell sites, cell sites that aren’t tall enough, and some limitations on what they’re allowed to install. Some refer to these as “cell towers” but coverage is delivered by a combination of different technologies, including antennae that can be installed on buildings, like church steeples. Heavy use on a single cell site is another big factor. The other piece of it is the existing wireless services overlay district which limits the locations where they can put a cell site. The result is spotty coverage throughout the entire town.
But just how spotty is Sudbury’s service? A report produced by Isotrope LLC for the Planning Board makes it pretty clear: the vast majority of the town has “marginal” or “poor” cellular service. You wouldn’t know it by looking at a coverage map from the carriers, because they often just shade in the areas where they have coverage no matter if it’s excellent or poor. And even if the signal is good, if the speed is slow most customers are still not going to be happy with their service.
What makes service marginal in Sudbury is indeed a combination of all the factors above, and more. According to the Isotrope report, some of the towers aren’t tall enough to provide strong signal to areas over hills. In other cases, areas of town with poor signals can put a burden on a cell site that is otherwise working pretty well for another neighborhood, and bog the network down for everyone. As the Isotrope report states: “Poor signal strength wastes capacity.” There are enough of those poor coverage areas throughout Sudbury that even residents who are living in the exceedingly rare area with excellent coverage may not regularly experience what they would call excellent coverage.
Dead Zones Everywhere
Isotrope did a driving test of wireless signals across major carriers in Sudbury back in October 2022, which formed the basis of their report. No quadrant of Sudbury is without its fair share of areas that have “poor” coverage, as indicated by the black dots in the maps below. Green is “excellent coverage,” yellow is the “design goal,” blue is “marginal” and black is poor coverage. But coverage varies by carrier. For example, if you’re on T-Mobile and living in the Pine Lakes neighborhood, or spend a lot of time in the northern half of Sudbury, you’re unlikely to get very good service, though you might do alright if you live in just the right spot within the blue lines.
You’ll also notice a lot of black on the eastern side of town, heading towards Lincoln by the high school. That should come as no surprise to anyone with kids in the high school. You’re better off trying to catch a pigeon with your bare hands and strapping a note to it than attempting text or call someone from Lincoln-Sudbury. And it turns out, all the carriers do pretty poorly with coverage in this area. Even Verizon, a carrier that was characterized by the Town’s wireless consultant as doing the best in Sudbury, is struggling mightily at the high school. Here’s their map:
Image: Isotrope LLC
As for the AT&T customers in Sudbury, it’s similarly spotty, with noteworthy poor coverage across the midsection of the town:
Image: Isotrope LLC
Where you live is only one factor, however. Where you spend time in Sudbury and how you get there is just as important. You may live in an area with good coverage, but spend much of your day in an area where your carrier has bad coverage. In addition to that, most people are on WiFi while at home, and may not rely on wireless coverage much, or at all, while home. But if you frequently take the kids down to Featherland Park for a game you’re likely to have quite poor coverage no matter what carrier you are using.
Based on the maps presented to the Planning Board, even neighbors within a few houses of each other may have drastically different experiences using the same carrier. Isotrope summed up Sudbury’s wireless coverage rather clearly:
“The drive test shows that Verizon and AT&T have general coverage throughout the town, at the lowest working level – Marginal – with higher service within about a half mile of existing cell sites. Some areas of poor service perforated by no service occur in disparate locations. T-Mobile coverage was much less effective, with much Poor and No signal in the northern two-thirds of town. The southern third was more like AT&T and Verizon.”
The problem with marginal coverage is that the signal will have trouble penetrating structures. So in theory you could experience what seems like decent coverage in your yard but poor coverage in your living room. And again, when you’re battling a bad signal while making a phone call, that’s wasting capacity for everyone else, further degrading coverage in Sudbury. In fact, even in areas with good coverage, heavy use from a large number of customers can degrade coverage. The solutions, according to Isotrope, are more cell sites and fill-in facilities (think small cells mounted on telephone poles) in areas that get heavy use:
“In addition to the impact of weaker and fewer signals at a distance from a cell site, the other cause of a capacity crunch is simply when there are too many subscribers connecting to a site. Even a place with good signal strength can be too demanding for one cell site to handle. The first strategy to relieve capacity at a cell site is to eliminate a large number of users at the cell edge, who tend to waste capacity due to poor signal quality. If there is a commercial area, residential area or recreational area with large population that is on the fringe of cell coverage, it is a candidate for a new wireless facility. By offloading those distant users to a new cell site, the existing cell site is relieved of a disproportionate burden. A second strategy to relieve a capacity crunch on a cell site is to put in fill-in facilities at high-activity areas. They could be rooftop facilities in a busy commercial area, or “small cells” placed on utility poles, lamp posts, etc. in strategic locations.”
Real World Consequences
Poor coverage and dead zones are typically perceived as a nuisance or an inconvenience. As society has increasingly incorporated wireless technology into daily life, wireless coverage has become essential to safety and urgent communication. For example, if someone sustained an injury at Featherland Park, notorious for its poor coverage, and nobody present had the ability to call 911, it could delay medical treatment.
The same holds true for service providers throughout Sudbury. It could be a utility worker in a neighborhood with poor coverage, a plumber working in a basement, or a tree removal team working under a dense tree canopy. All of those professionals are faced with risky situations on a daily basis, yet may not have the ability to communicate effectively with headquarters for guidance and decision support, or with first responders in the event of an emergency.
Dead zones and the accuracy of carrier coverage maps are not just a local issue, and have become points of focus at the federal level in the past, even getting the attention of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
At the same time, cell sites aren’t considered to be attractive by most people. And Sudbury has a long history of being vigilant in its efforts to preserve the “character of the town.” For some, cell towers and antennas trigger sincerely-felt fears about health risks. Though the medical community has yet to find convincing evidence that links cell tower RF waves to noticeable human health effects, most experts note that much more research is needed.
So there are competing interests at play, with Town officials often having to balance different priorities. When is wireless coverage good enough, and how do you determine when the appearance of a cell site is detrimental enough to the character of the town to the point that it’s better to have poor coverage? That’s something the Town has tried to address with zoning, but with mixed results.
The Wireless Services Overlay District
The Town has had a Wireless Services Overlay district in the zoning bylaw for quite some time. It even received an update in 2011, which was passed by Town Meeting. You can read about that here, and you can review Article 21 here. As described in the warrant for Annual Town Meeting in 2011:
“These amendments are proposed in order to expand the usefulness of the Wireless Services Overlay District, which will have the effect of protecting the Town against undesirable cell tower sites in inappropriate locations. Cellular service providers are still scouring the Town for new sites. As the industry has changed, customers are demanding coverage all over Town, and the need for infrastructure that can carry large amounts of data. The properties contained in the original 1998 overlay district have been almost completely developed, and the cellular companies are looking elsewhere in Sudbury for additional sites to expand their networks. We are again trying to proactively locate new sites that meet the purposes of the bylaw, satisfy the needs of the industry, protect the Town from undesirable installations and provide legally defensible solutions.”
That update limited the height of antennae to 80 feet on town land, and added some new sites that were acceptable for this use, though the article itself was clear that they were balancing the need for more/better wireless infrastructure with the desire to protect the town from unwanted installations:
“Providing new sites will enhance the Town’s ability to deny applications on properties outside the overlay district. Given the build-out of the original parcels, we will be vulnerable to legal challenges if we do not continue to provide appropriate sites.”
Given the addition of new sites was intended really as a means to deny installations elsewhere, it’s clear that Sudbury’s approach prioritizes prevention of unwanted installations over developing better coverage throughout town. Furthermore, that last bit about “legally defensible solutions” isn’t hypothetical. There was a legal challenge in the early 2000’s brought forth by Nextel after they were denied variances and special permits for a cell site.
The federal government has given wireless companies broad protections and the right to compete for your business. The Federal Communications Commission even has to monitor and report on competition regularly. Indeed, competition is a major focus for the agency and for Congress, and the wireless industry has been assertive about their rights. Another bylaw update in 2016 (Article 37) brought some tweaks to bring it into compliance with new legislation that limited the Town’s ability to deny some changes to existing cell sites. So far in Sudbury, that hasn’t led to significantly improved coverage.
Sudbury’s Planning Board is currently in the process of developing yet another update to the Wireless Services Overlay District, which is why Isotrope LLC was brought in to consult with them. For a concise summary of changes and additions they may consider, jump to 0:47:40 in their April 26, 2023 meeting.
Based on that meeting, it does appear that they’re continuing down a similar path wherein prevention of undesirable installations is the priority over improving coverage, but the consultant also provided several ideas for ways Sudbury could potentially encourage wireless companies to improve coverage without abandoning the protections the overlay district provides. Nothing is final yet, but things could heat up as the January deadline for the 2024 Annual Town Meeting warrant approaches.
The Bottom Line
Sudbury probably won’t have “excellent” wireless coverage anytime soon, regardless of which carrier you use. But the Planning Board may well be setting a course to simultaneously strengthen wireless coverage as well as protections from undesirable cell sites.
Ultimately, the quality of coverage in Sudbury depends on many factors and multiple parties beyond just the wireless companies. The Planning Board, Zoning Board of Appeals and even the Select Board all have influence over some facet of wireless coverage in Sudbury. Just this year Town Meeting approved a “General Bylaw for the Placement of Small Wireless Facilities in the Public Ways” that gives the Town the ability to regulate 5G (small cell) installations. (Article 40)
It’s not easy to get three boards, a handful of wireless carriers, and an entire wireless infrastructure industry moving in the same direction. But Town Meeting overwhelmingly passed the 5G bylaw in May, possibly indicating that there’s general support among residents for improvements to wireless coverage throughout town. The Select Board was even able to collaborate with the Planning Board on that bylaw. All the signs suggest that there’s consensus on the approach within town government and a good chance for an update to the Wireless Services Overlay District to pass at a future Town Meeting.
Assuming that update passes, and if the wireless industry is ready to invest and improve coverage in Sudbury, it just comes down to how Sudbury chooses to balance other considerations like aesthetics and occasional public health fears when a proposal comes in. Leaning in one direction could lead to significantly improved wireless coverage. Leaning in the other direction could mean the “marginal coverage” is here to stay.