NATE Goes to Washington (Part Four of Four)
Several representatives of the National Association of Tower Erectors (NATE) came to Washington, D.C. recently to lobby Congress, the FCC and various government agencies. Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief Leslie Stimson sat down with the six members of their lobbying team to discuss NATE’s regulatory priorities and get a sense of their 30 meetings. Sitting at the table were: NATE Board Director John Paul Jones, Board Chairman Jim Tracy, COO Paula Nurnberg, Board Director Randy Scott, Executive Director Todd Schlekeway and Director of Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Jim Goldwater. Previous portions of our series concerned the tower worker shortage, workforce development and the administration’s infrastructure package. Today, we look at NATE’s efforts concerning drones.
IT: Talk about your meeting with the Executive Office of the President – the Office of Science and Technology.
Schlekeway: NATE has a UAS [Unmanned Aircraft Systems] committee with 22 stakeholders on it, representing people with an aviation background. Jim Tracy and John Paul Jones are on that. And some of the service provider companies like Verizon and AT&T are on it.
Tracy: And the tower owners. Every part of the wireless ecosystem is represented on that committee.
Schlekeway: We’re embracing drones from a safety and efficiency standpoint. They’re not a replacement for the workforce, nor do we want them to be, nor can they be. But what they can do is mitigate risk — through inspection, in pre-site photos and video before the tower tech even steps foot on the tower. The use cases are expanding rapidly with what you can do with artificial intelligence and data collection. It’s been a pretty remarkable area for us to be involved in. I would say we’re a nearly pioneer in commercialization of wireless.
Tracy: According to the FAA we’re the first pioneer, organizationally.
Schlekeway: Our committee has put together a best practices document (Unmanned Aerial Systems Operations Around Vertical Communications Infrastructure) that’s already on its second edition. We’re now working on a tower site checklist, kind of a JHA [Job Hazards Assessment] for drone operators. We also came out with the NATE Climber Connection Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Video.
Tracy: The pre-flight and during-flight and post-flight checklist tells people the proper way to execute when they’re working around a communication tower. On the technology level we’ve gone beyond simply photographs or video. Our committee members are working on things like RF assessment sensors on a drone and asset recognition software. It’s kind of a facial recognition for an antenna or an RRU, radio, where it looks at the shape, height, width, length, number of ports and it says: ‘Oh, that is a [blank] model antenna.’ The technology is really leapfrogging. As NATE, we have to turn it into actionable data so that our customers can sort through … about four terabytes of information. The amount of data’s incredible. We can’t just dump that somewhere. We have to be able to sort it and deliver actionable data to our clients who are the public safety agencies.
IT: What did they say?
Todd: That office was very innovative, very receptive. They agreed using small drones [55 pounds and under] commercially in the tower industry is tailor-made for communication towers.
Goldwater: They asked what issues are big for us and we said visual line-of-sight. Going up to a tall tower could be a bit of an issue and we would like to have some flexibility on that. [Also,] flying over people, because not everything is a tower. Sometimes you’re going to modify a structure. It could be a lamppost, so you need to have some flexibility. We have been working with the FAA who have been very accommodating and very supportive of us. We strongly support their Part 107 because it allows us not just to fly up to 400 feet, but we can go higher than 400 feet as long as you stay within 400 feet of the structure.
IT: So line-of-sight is important, flying over people…
Schlekeway: Because where they’re putting antennas now, is not just on a remote, rural tower. They’re putting in small cells; they’re putting equipment on utility infrastructure, the right-of-way, rooftops…
Goldwater: The Amazons, others, want to use them to deliver packages and pizzas. We’re not involved in the privacy issues because we’re not flying over somebody’s house.
Tracy: The bottom line with drones is, NATE supports and has been very active in a role that helps people solve problems while being safe. That’s because we only use bona fide drone operators or drone pilots. Also, we’ve cooperated with deployment of those for technological reasons, but also there’s been any number of rescue scenarios where NATE members have been very active in supporting local law enforcement and federal law enforcement with our assets. And it goes far beyond [Hurricanes] Harvey and Irma.
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
November 20, 2017
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