President Joe Biden signed the infrastructure bill containing $65 billion in broadband infrastructure grants into law last week. 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. Read part one including Millennia Contracting, Innovated Tower Solutions and Elevated Services here.
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.
Precision Communications
Sean Wenger, CEO Precision Communications, hosted Mullin and Carr. He said, “It’s great to have these conversations that potentially influence policy decisions.” They discussed the broadcast repack. Wegner said they were interested in the differences between the broadcast and the wireless space. “We were able to talk through some of the rigging requirements that we have on the tall towers. But a lot of the conversations were around some of the next-generation of TV technology” or ATSC.
In the telecom space, Wegner said they discussed the rural and urban digital divide, education, emergency response, and even economic development. “It was really great to have those firsthand perspectives. Congressman Mullen actually lives in rural Oklahoma. And so, some of the connectivity issues that we’re talking about, he actually has [experienced] that firsthand.”
PerfectVision
George Kerstetter, National Sales Engineer for PerfectVision, hosted Carr and invited some of the company’s industry partners. “We brought to light an issue with some FCC licensing and unguarded RF emissions if a small cell antenna were to go on the ground.” If the pole or light structure were hit and damaged, “whether it be a motor vehicle accident, or a storm, some type of natural disaster, and the structure goes down and commercial power is not interrupted, then the antenna can still be transmitting. And then it could potentially pose a problem for first responders or the general public who are within the vicinity of the antenna while it’s transmitting,” Kerstetter said.
Asked whether solving it would entail someone going to the site to turn off the transmission, Kerstetter said: “there needs to be [a way] to shut that down, whether it be remotely, whether it be the use of an interlock device, but, you know, clearly someone should not be approaching that. And it’s hard to tell, if it’s on the ground, if it’s still transmitting or not.”
In addition to the antenna issue, the company held a roundtable, and focused on four things that are affecting the industry from PerfectVision’s perspective. Concerning Carr, Kerstetter said, “he’s out, he sees towers, he sees the water towers, he sees rooftops. So our perspective was to close the loop [and show him] the distribution side of the industry. During the roundtable, we talked about infrastructure funding, building out the last mile, workforce shortages, and then also things that are happening within the supply chain across the industry.”
Estech
Kaylee Stechmann is VP of Sales and Marketing for Estech LLC, “which specializes in solutions for water tower installations with proper co-location of equipment so that water tower owners can still properly manage that.” The company hosted Long and Carr. “We really focused on a lot of the safety and oversight issues that we’re seeing on water towers,” said Stechmann.
Stechmann explained: “Our company was started due to frustration of the co-location of equipment, how difficult climbing was because a ladder is the only structure that goes from the bottom to the top when a water tower is built. That’s the most common place to install all of the cables and coax. We’re here to provide a solution to offset everything safely away from climbing ladders to make climbing easier, and to make water tower maintenance easier.”
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
Reader Interactions