A lawsuit between the town of Chilmark and Verizon Wireless has been put to bed after the town acknowledged that it improperly denied the cellphone carrier’s application to put wireless antennas on poles in the up-Island community. 

In a settlement agreement signed last month, the town said it would reconsider the application for 14 small antennas on privately-owned utility poles, primarily along Middle Road and North Road. The select board then voted unanimously last Tuesday to approve the application. 

“We learned we did not have the authority under the Federal Telecommunications Act to support the decision we earlier made, so we came into line with what the telecommunications act requires, and that resulted in effectively an approval,” select board Matt Poole said at the meeting last week. 

The select board rejected the application in January. At the time, select board members said they were more interested in building a single large cell tower to help deal with the town’s lack of cellular service. Spotty coverage in parts of town has spurred safety concerns among residents as land lines decline. 

Verizon sued in federal district court on March 16, arguing that the town should have more thoroughly considered the application. The board, the company contended, never made any site-specific findings about any of the proposed equipment.

“The Town has no regulations or written policies establishing standards for the Board’s review of applications to attach wireless equipment on utility poles in Town rights of way,” Verizon wrote in the 20-page suit. “The board did not purport to apply any standards in deliberating on and deciding the Application.” 

Verizon also accused the town of using the denial as a way to pressure Verizon into putting its antennas on another company’s infrastructure. 

As part of the settlement agreement, the town wrote that it would vote to grant the application on all 14 antennas within 14 days of the meeting to reconsider the application. If that happened, the parties would dismiss the lawsuit. 

With the lawsuit in the rearview mirror, the town is also considering other ways to improve phone service. The select board has asked the planning board to draft a regulation that would allow a large cell tower to be built on Peaked Hill. 

The town is also scrambling for alternatives after Verizon announced it is cutting its copper-based landline service to Chilmark on Oct. 28 as part of a large-scale transition to fiber-optic landlines. 

The municipality has seven town phones that run on the copper service as a backup. Verizon must replace copper landlines with fiber at no cost for residential customers who continue to request landline service, according to the Mass Department of Telecommunications. But that only applies to places that have transitioned largely to fiber — which Chilmark has not, due to construction costs, said town administrator Tim Carroll. 

Verizon recommends customers switch to using cellphones, but with the unreliability of cell service in Chilmark, town officials are planning to turn to Starklink for three town hall phones and two police station phones.