Subject:
Title
Signal Strength Testing for Cell Phone Coverage
Body
Purpose:
For the Town Council to discuss whether the Town should contract with a private firm, from a party not connected to A carrier or tower/monopole developer, to provide an Assessment OF signal strenGth of wireless communications in Vienna.
Key QUESTIONS:
1. Does the Town Council wish for staff to pursue procuring a vendor who can assess signal strength for cell phone coverage?
2. If the answer to the first question is “yes,” what are important features of the scope of work that the Town Council would like to see in such a service?
3. If the answer to the first question is “yes,” does the Town Council wish this assessment to have an impact on the current timeline for making changes to the Town Code?
BACKGROUND SUMMARY:
Mayor Colbert has requested that this item be added to the October 19th work session.
Since 2025, Town staff have been exploring the potential approaches to improving wireless/cellular coverage in Vienna. This activity has been in response to comments from Council members, residents, and business representatives noting poor cellular reception within the Town. In early 2026, the Town Council adopted its five priorities for the calendar year and placed improving wireless coverage on this list. Since then, the Council has held three work sessions to discuss the topic. At the last session, on September 14th, the Council reviewed draft code changes in service of this goal and asked staff to return to a future meeting (rather than work session) with an updated draft so that the Council could refer the proposed changes to the Planning Commission for its review and recommendation. That meeting is currently scheduled for October 26, 2026.
The current plan is for staff to facilitate the review and potential adoption process with a completion date anticipated in early 2027. In parallel, staff would develop a procurement approach for review by Town Council to make Town-owned land available for the development of towers that would increase signal strength within the Town.
OVERVIEW:
The purpose of this agenda item is for the Town Council to discuss whether it wishes staff to pursue a vendor who would assess signal strength in Vienna and whether such a course of action should delay the proposed changes in zoning and the development of a request for proposals for use of Town land.
The information on the strength of coverage in Vienna comes from two sources:
1) Residents, business representatives, and visitors have discussed that the coverage is poor with all three major carriers in many places in town.
2) Major carriers and tower/monopole developers have shown Town staff proprietary information, in the form of maps, that have supported the anecdotes that the public has discussed. In a prior work session, staff showed a map that approximates this information without divulging proprietary content. It shows the areas of Vienna where all three major carriers (AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile) report weak coverage, but it does not rule out that individual carriers are weak in other parts of Town. This map is provided as Attachment 1.
Staff understand well that the carriers and tower/monopole developers are interested parties in the discussion and that the information provided to the Town and other jurisdictions is likely serving their interests in getting Vienna and other jurisdictions to relax restrictions. Furthermore, publicly available websites for the major carriers show that the entire Town is covered, although they do not account for demand as impacted by usage.
Staff does not have technical expertise in this area, but our understanding of this seeming discrepancy is as follows: the entire Town is covered by all three major carriers but there has been degradation in intensity and effectiveness of coverage in recent years because of the huge increase in demand relative to the amount of data that the antennas are able to transmit. As such, the increased demand for coverage has not been matched by a proportionate increase in the infrastructure serving that demand.
SUMMARY/STAFF IMPRESSIONS:
In considering whether to direct staff to procure a vendor to assess signal strength, staff suggest that the Town Council consider the purpose(s) of procuring such a service.
Purposes of this assistance could include:
1. Answering the question of whether there is a measurable coverage problem of significance in Vienna, and
2. Providing technical insight as to the geography of coverage problems to assist in targeting zoning changes and/or the placement of towers/monopoles.
RECOMMENDATION:
Staff recommend that the Town Council provide guidance on whether staff should move forward to procure a firm to assess signal strength for wireless communications in Vienna and how such guidance should affect the timeline for zoning changes and preparing a request for proposals for tower/monopole deployment on Town property.