At last, Ocean Pines will get its cell tower

Finally, after plans were discouraged, dismissed and derailed for nearly a decade, a cell phone tower is about to go up in Ocean Pines, with improved service to be delivered in 2027.

Why it’s been so difficult to install this vital equipment in the community depends on whom you ask, but there’s no dispute that customers, residents, government officials and business interests seemed to disconnect more often than not when discussing cell phone tower placement in the past.

It was around this time eight years ago that months of negotiations between the Worcester County Commissioners and cell tower company Calvert Crosswinds appeared to be headed for approval only to collapse abruptly two months later.

That plan was to place a tower on county-owned land where the wastewater treatment facility stands in Ocean Pines. However, the project was ultimately blocked by Ocean Pines’ representatives on the county board, Commissioners Chip Bertino and Jim Bunting.

Apparently, some Ocean Pines residents objected to seeing the community’s serene woodland setting pierced by a big metal spire looming above the treetops. Bunting also argued that Crosswinds wasn’t giving county government enough space on the tower to install its own communications equipment.

But all that is over now, as Ocean Pines Association officials stepped up to back this effort on association property, rather than county land. They also have the commissioners’ assurances that they will work with them, which is the  sensible thing to do given that smart phones have become extensions of our identities and our link to, well, everything.

Although the new tower in Ocean Pines won’t solve all the cell service transmission and reception problems in that pocket of the county, it will help a great deal. Considering that Ocean Pines residents can use their phones everywhere else they travel in the surrounding area, it’s about time they have the same ability at home.