While towercos and wireless infrastructure providers say dealing with municipalities on pole attachments, right-of-ways and other siting issues is no picnic, local governments bristle at the FCC’s proposals to “deem granted” applications not acted on within a certain time frame and lowering the permitting fees that can be charged. Inside Towers covered the towerco point of view in our top story; here we provide takeaways of what local governments tell the FCC they want.
The Communications Workers of America tells the Commission, local authorities have a legitimate public interest in protecting their transportation networks, street lighting and signal systems, as well as urban planning and historical preservation mandates. “Broader deployment of wireless infrastructure, ever closer to the public, raises public health concerns regarding radio-frequency emissions.” CWA calls this “an important area of research that the Commission must address without further delay.”
As far as carriers and towercos facing what they consider exorbitant siting fees and slow permitting processes, Smart Communities points out wireless carriers provided only 25 specific examples of allegedly egregious local government wireless siting policies. Given that there are over 90,000 local governments in the United States, these 25 complaints represent only 0.02 percent of all the local governments in this country, it tells the agency.
The City of New York writes the local authority issues in the FCC’s proposed rule changes “directly affect the ability of state and local governments to manage their rights-of-way for use by all their citizens” and “the decisions that state and localities make on these issues are heavily influenced by the resources they have available, and new regulations by the Commission will not change those realities.” New York supports the Commission’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Council as an appropriate venue for collaborative work, adding that collaboration would be enhanced with additional representation of local governments on the BDAC.
July 19, 2017
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