President Joe Biden signed the infrastructure bill containing $65 billion in broadband infrastructure grants into law last week. His signature made the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act law 10 days after the House passed the bipartisan piece of legislation. During the weeks before congressional passage, members of NATE: the Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association, hosted members of Congress and other regulatory officials to educate policymakers about what the industry needs to deploy 5G.
Representatives of Elevated Services, LLC; Estech LLC; Innovated Tower Solutions; Millennia Contracting Inc.; PerfectVision and Precision Communications spoke with Inside Towers about these site visits and industry priorities for a two-part series.
The federal policymakers either visited company facilities and/or a tower in NATE member areas. Some of those include House Energy and Commerce Committee GOP members Reps. Billy Long of Missouri, Markwayne Mullin of Ohio and David McKinley of West Virginia. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr went on several site visits as well.
NATE Director of Government Relations Todd Washam said, “Jim Goldwater and I are here in Washington, D.C., and we go talk to members of Congress and their staff, and teach them about these things. But when they go and visit with a NATE member at their facility, they get to see exactly what’s going on out in the field.” He called NATE members’ involvement “crucial” to getting federal regulators to support the association’s priorities on Capitol Hill.
NATE Director of Legislative Affairs Jim Goldwater echoed those thoughts. “We have found that these show and tells where we’ve had agency people, OSHA, or FCC, or whomever, have been really helpful for us to get the feds to understand what it is that we do.”
Millennia Contracting
Millennia Contracting Inc. President/CE Kevin Dougherty, who’s been involved in several site visits, said they enable policymakers to learn about the communications infrastructure industry. “They asked a lot of questions, which is good, so they can find out about our industry and what our pain points are. We’ve had them ask questions about zoning and permitting, [including] … why there are different types of structures. I think it’s very important that we do this as often as we can, because it really gets our word out there of what we do. And I think it’s helping with workforce development.”
Innovated Tower Solutions
Inside Towers asked whether policymakers understand how hard it is to acquire sites on which to build towers and how long the process takes. Loyd Linger II, President and CEO, Innovated Tower Solutions, said McKinley “was asking about permitting,” and the costs of a tower from saying, “we want to build it here” to when it’s completed.
Elevated Services
During that same visit, Nicole Paulette, Vice President Elevated Services, LLC, said someone from Sen. Shelley Moore Capito’s (R-WV) office was surprised about how a site is selected, “and getting the land ready with the civil crew, plus gravel and fencing — every little detail that goes into it. He was fascinated by the whole process.”
Read part two of this series tomorrow.
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
Reader Interactions