A group calling itself the Smart Communities and Special Districts Coalition, tells the FCC that wireless carriers deserve praise for working with local governments nationwide to streamline deployment for wireless infrastructure. But at the same time, it takes issue with assertions of Sprint and other carriers that local governments stand in the way of that deployment.
The coalition is comprised of individual localities, local government associations, and local agencies responsible for roadway safety which together, represent more than 1,800 communities and nearly 30 million residents in 10 states. For example, the cities of Laurel, MD; Los Angeles, CA and McAllen, TX are part of the group.
In a July 17 Sprint blog post, “Densifying the Sprint Network with Tiny, Mighty Small Cells,” the carrier states: “With our Next-Gen Network build we’ll continue to invest, expanding and extending our use of large traditional cell towers, as well as state-of-the-art small cells. Our flexible toolkit of innovative small cells play a big role in improving our coverage, reliability, and speed across our nationwide network as we work to launch the first 5G mobile network in the U.S in the first half of 2019.”
Before the Commission’s recent action on pole attachment complaints, Sprint told the agency: “Many municipalities have imposed fees that dramatically exceed a reasonable approximation of the costs a city incurs to review an application or to maintain the public rights-of-way.” Sprint and other carriers have also told the agency that local governments raise major barriers to infrastructure deployment.
The Coalition tells the agency it has consistently demonstrated, “if local policies rose to the level of prohibitions” [as is required by the Communications Act to justify Commission action] “this level of deployment simply would not be happening.”
July 24, 2018
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