STONE HARBOR – During its July 7 Zoom meeting, Stone Harbor Borough Council set in motion the development of a plan to give the municipality some control over the distribution of 5G cell technology across the borough.
The major cell carriers have been moving expeditiously to establish small cell nodes to relieve congestion in their large cell 4G infrastructure and to prepare for a more robust set of offering when 5G technology is fully deployed.
5G is more than just the next generation of cell technology. It promises to revolutionize the speed and capacity of cellular networks. To do this, it requires a very different infrastructure of distributed small cell node equipment on utility polls close to areas of use.
According to V-Comm’s Dominic Villecco, a borough the size of Stone Harbor might eventually need as many as 100 distributed poles with carrier equipment to implement the technology.
Utility poles can be a touchy issue in the borough, where property owners once engaged in a long battle with Atlantic City Electric over infrastructure changes that introduced mammoth steel poles to support new electric transmission lines.
Nothing as massive would be part of a 5G rollout, but the council wants to be prepared with a plan that would guide that rollout in ways that are aesthetically pleasing and appropriate to the nature of the borough.
