Cellcom on Washington Island

Chambers Island is considered a peaceful retreat for its visitors, with the lack of commercial energy as part of its charm. Access to public safety and cell phone coverage have become necessities on the island, pushing Cellcom to use mother nature and finely tuned technology to deliver reliable communication year round.

The cell site on Chambers Island is one of Cellcom’s two alternative-energy sites and uses a combination of solar panels, a wind turbine and a battery bank to operate. The site not only provides improved cell service for residential customers and visitors to the island, but also delivers enhanced radio coverage for local public safety departments, especially between the island and the rugged western shore of northern Door County.

Cellcom has made several major improvements to its renewable energy system in the past two years, using technology that is matched to the weather patterns to successfully achieve reliable, renewable energy for the communications equipment.

Before Cellcom’s green cell site, Chambers Island lacked communication service. Building an alternative-energy site that delivered service for the majority of the year was a drastic improvement, and even though activity on the island is quite limited during the winter, Cellcom is committed to providing uninterrupted, year-round service.

“Maintaining a wireless network will always come with challenges, especially when Wisconsin weather is a factor in your success. Challenges are great opportunities to raise the bar, and our team will continue to find ways to improve and maximize coverage and capacity for our customers,” said Bob Sobieck, director of RF engineering at Cellcom.

“Success is measured in up time. We were able to keep emergency communication up and running through the entire winter this year. There was one outage for the cellular service on the tower due to lack of power, which lasted a little more than two days,” said Sobieck. “We’re ultimately finding a balance at the site. We know the weather patterns, to the extent you can know something so unpredictable, and have optimized our equipment for the conditions on the island – from the angle of the solar panels to the height of the turbine to the cables that connect everything.”