Jeweler Francine Fiesel said she lost $8,000 at last year’s Los Altos Arts & Wine Festival. As she made transactions from her booth on Main Street, her mobile credit card reader had no cellular service. Only after the event did she realize none of her patrons were charged for her merchandise.
“It was horrendous,” said Fiesel, who paid more than $200 for a mobile hotspot at this year’s festival. “Here we are in the heart of Silicon Valley, and there’s no reception.”
After years of spotty coverage, city officials are considering new solutions for the persistent cell service problems in the downtown area, including free public Wi-Fi, as frustrations mount among residents and visitors like Fiesel.
“It’s definitely a big issue,” Los Altos City Councilmember Neysa Fligor said. “I started hearing more complaints as we were coming out of COVID, and more people were going downtown. … It’s gotten much worse.”
At the June 13 city council meeting, Fligor unsuccessfully advocated for prioritizing downtown wireless improvements, budgeted for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, ahead of downtown lighting, budgeted for 2023-2024. But her fellow council members contended that lighting was more pressing based on public feedback.
Still, officials are actively seeking to remedy downtown’s cell service, according to Anthony Carnesecca, assistant to the city manager.
“My hope is that we can work on cellular coverage short term and figure out ways that we can get that improved,” he said. “And then at the end of this fiscal year, we can start evaluating what the best options are.”
Going public?
Among the options is free, public Wi-Fi downtown. The network could guarantee visitors connectivity regardless of cell service, Carnesecca noted.
“That would be a security blanket on top of increased cellular coverage, if you will,” he said.
Carnesecca added that improving cell service would require private carriers to install additional infrastructure near downtown. However, cellular carriers in contact with the city have countered that the cost-benefit analysis of added cell nodes is not profitable, he said.
City officials are in the “very preliminary stages” of working with an intermediary company to communicate with carriers more effectively, Carnesecca said.
“We can try to have the cellular companies understand that they’re not covering Los Altos like they say they are in their coverage maps,” he said. “What we’re trying to do, and we’ve always tried to do, is advocate on behalf of our residents, businesses and visitors.”
Historically, Los Altos residents have been resistant to cellular installations. In March and May 2019, the city rejected applications for 12 cell nodes from AT&T and Verizon Wireless. After the rejections, officials passed an emergency ordinance to restrict areas in which nodes could be installed. In response, the carriers sued the city in January 2020, asserting that the rejections and ordinance violated federal guidelines.
The suit was dismissed in August 2022 after the city council passed a new telecommunications ordinance identifying “preferred” and “less-preferred” locations, easing application requirements.
“I know there are several applications right now going through the process,” Fligor said. “With the carriers being able to install more infrastructure, and the city council considering seeing if we can supplement that with some city-sponsored Wi-Fi connectivity, I think that should be a big part of the solution.”
A spokesperson for carrier T-Mobile said the company is upgrading from 4G LTE to 5G service in the downtown area, which can be up to 200 times faster. An AT&T representative said the carrier would “continue (to) look for ways to improve our network and provide better wireless service in Los Altos.” Verizon will “continue to invest in adding capacity and new upgrades,” a company spokesperson said.
None of the contacted carriers responded to the Town Crier’s questions on the cause of downtown’s weak coverage.
And for some, the city and private carriers’ murky timeline isn’t an adequate response to issues that have plagued downtown for years.
Festival proves ‘a perfect storm’
After last month’s Los Altos Arts & Wine Festival, the Los Altos Village Association received more than a dozen complaints about poor cell service, according to LAVA executive director Scott Hunter. Large events like the festival, which brought approximately 60,000 visitors downtown, seem to exacerbate the issue, he added.
“(The festival) was a perfect storm,” Hunter said. “One person sent us an email saying that they lost track of their family member because they couldn’t get them either via text or trying to call them on the phone.”
Hunter said he has concerns that a public Wi-Fi system, if implemented, may quickly become outdated as hardware evolves.
“That’s something I don’t know that the city wants to spend,” he said. “I wouldn’t want the city to spend any money pursuing a Wi-Fi network if it would become obsolete too soon.”
Carnesecca said the city will continue to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of a downtown Wi-Fi system.
“We’re going to have to do an analysis to figure out what is the best hardware structure for a public Wi-Fi system, so we can make sure that what we implement will be here for the future,” he said.
For vendors and visitors attending downtown events like the Arts & Wine Festival, dependable cell service should be a given, said Dana Hale-Mounier, director of Pacific Fine Arts Festivals and coordinator of the artists.
“Cellular service is crucial to special events,” Hale-Mounier said. “Gone are the days of people carrying a checkbook or a lot of cash. Artists are expected to accept digital payments, and they rely on essential online tools such as Square, Venmo and the like to process payments quickly.”
Painter Adam Stone has participated in the festival for a decade. But given the recent cell problems, he’s not sure he’ll be returning as a vendor.
“Smack-dab in the middle of Silicon Valley and no service,” he said. “It’s a dead zone.”
