A wonderful PBS nature documentary that recently aired described the plight of villagers in a rural area of Tanzania, on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. Elephants periodically raided the villagers’ crops, destroying in one night food that had taken a growing season to raise.

Conservationists working with the villagers devised a means to scare off the elephants using fireworks. One farmer was responsible for alerting the rest of the farmers to the approach of the elephants, so a team charged with protecting the crops could mobilize a defence.

At the critical moment in the episode — in rural Africa — the village farmer, spear in hand, pulled out a cell phone of the older flip-cover variety and made a call alerting his neighbors, with no apparent trouble being heard. Good thing there are not any marauding elephants on Chappaquiddick.

Of course, seasonal and year-round residents of the small, sometime-island community connected by a ribbon of barrier beach to Edgartown proper, as well as numerous visitors to this lovely easternmost point on Martha’s Vineyard, have plenty of other reasons to want, and expect, reliable wireless service.

There are the obvious public safety benefits of being able to communicate in an emergency. In past comments, Chris Kennedy, the Martha’s Vineyard superintendent for The Trustees of the Reservations, the conservation organization that owns or manages much of the island’s extensive beachfront, said there is no reliable cell phone signal on the beaches from Wasque to Cape Poge, and calls are routinely dropped or garbled, which could cost valuable minutes in an emergency.

And there is the convenience of knowing when to head to the On Time ferry, which crosses Edgartown Harbor and provides the only reliable link between Chappy and Edgartown, to meet an arriving guest, or to simply make a call to check in about dinner plans.

In some cases, people have moved to Chappy aware of the lack of public and technological conveniences, only to decide that they want those conveniences, and then push to have them — but only to the extent that it meets their needs and not the needs of others.

Years ago, the town fought a legal battle with a man who purchased an isolated home at the end of North Neck, a narrow peninsula, and then insisted he ought to be allowed to build a dock — prohibited on virtually pristine Cape Poge — to tie up a boat because a family member had a medical condition that could require a quick trip to reach Edgartown, and tides often flooded his access road. He lost that court battle.

For more than five years, Chappy residents have been squabbling over how best to provide wireless service. The squabbling shows no signs of ending. There are echoes of past unresolved Chappy squabbles over bike paths (never built), cable service (yes, but Chappy residents have to pony up for the connection) and public transportation (no jitney service).

This week, reporter Monica Busch describes the results of a survey of Chappaquiddick property owners (“Chappaquiddick residents remain divided as ever over wireless strategy”) who were asked for their opinions on how best to improve cellular service, the latest effort to resolve the issue.

There are those residents who favor a wireless tower and those who want a distributed antenna system (DAS), which relies on a network of small antennas often set on utility poles. Towers are relatively inexpensive to erect, and are the favored choice of wireless providers, who typically lease space on towers but do not build them.

DAS is more expensive to construct, and does not provide wide coverage. A DAS in Chilmark and Aquinnah provides spotty service.

In June 2012, Edgartown selectmen accepted the only response to a request for proposals (RFP) to build and operate a DAS. In a joint venture, Grain Communications Group of Sarasota, Fla., and Broadband Service Group, a Michigan-based company, submitted a proposal, but were unable to attract any mobile carriers to sign up.

Last summer, Grain Communications Inc. proposed building a tower. That offer lapsed when town leaders took no action in the face of continued debate among Chappy residents.

Despite a lack of consensus, a majority of the 226 survey respondents, 76 percent, said they are unsatisfied with the service now available.

The choices for Chappy residents appear relatively straightforward: Continue to suffer from poor wireless service and complain about it; erect a tower and have service; or find a way to convince a company that a DAS is not a money-losing proposition and get service.

It is easy to understand the desire of Chappy residents to preserve the natural landscape. That desire is no less strong in Chilmark, which hosts a series of antennas on Peaked Hill used by public safety agencies, or in West Tisbury, Oak Bluffs, and Tisbury, all of which host wireless towers.

The benefit of a tower is that it is relatively easily erected, and easily removed should a more desirable technological solution present itself in the near future.

There is one other consideration. In underserved signal areas, federal regulations allow a private landowner to lease space for a wireless tower to a private company and reap the financial benefits free of local zoning restrictions.

The last section of the Chappy survey solicited comments. A total of 107 people had something to say.

One respondent said, “I don’t care how you do it. I don’t care what it looks like. Just get it done.”