American Tower Company, the concern that wants to build a distributed antenna system (DAS) to improve cell phone coverage in the three up-Island towns, has submitted a letter to West Tisbury suggesting that its application does not need review by the town zoning board of appeals.

Dated Dec. 14 and written by American Tower attorney Alexander P. Gamota, the letter claims that approval is required by the town selectmen but not the zoning board of appeals.

“ATC has concluded that West Tisbury’s zoning bylaw is not applicable to those elements of our proposed system which will be located within the public rights of way. Instead ATC plans to apply to the board of selectmen for such grants of location as soon as possible,” the letter says.

The company wants to put whip antennas, equipment cabinets and back-up batteries on top of utility poles along public rights of way. The plan calls for using existing poles as well as putting up new stub poles.

The current plan calls for 55 node locations: eight in Aquinnah, 24 in Chilmark and 23 in West Tisbury. The plan also calls for stringing fiber optic cable along approximately 1,200 existing utility poles owned by NSTAR.

The West Tisbury zoning board of appeals has referred the matter to town counsel for an opinion.

Meanwhile, the Aquinnah plan review committee took a new vote this week to authorize American Tower to start building equipment for the antenna system along town public ways. The committee voted 3-2 on Nov. 30 to authorize the work, but the vote was invalid because it was not a super majority.

The review committee met last Tuesday and voted 5-0 this time to authorize the work. Chilmark’s 13-member plan review committee has already voted 10-3 in favor of the DAS system.