Zayo Group is building out a new 100 small cell network in downtown Wichita, KS and so far, so good. “This is a great thing. It’s going up on poles that are already there,” city council member James Clendenin told t KAKE-TV. “It’s going to provide a coverage in our city for cell phones and all sorts of other technology that our city doesn’t currently have.”
“One of the areas that they have put in multiple towers is around Intrust Arena, where you get big groups of people and people that want to have cell phone coverage and eventually it should help everybody,” said Gary Janzen, city engineer.
IdeaTek originally got the contract in 2014 – which includes paying the city $110,000 for the right to use portions of the right-of-way – and Zayo Group acquired that portion of IdeaTek’s business last year and is carrying out the mission. “They’ve looked at strategic locations around the city within our right-of-way. We’ve got a process in place to permit that, work closely with them to look at aesthetics, to look at site distances, to make things safe,” Janzen told KAKE.
Currently, the local government has oversight over these requests by wireless companies. But a just passed piece of legislation sitting on Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s desk awaiting signature will give the decision-making process over to the installer, not the community. “This bill would totally take any sort of local oversight away and any sort of voice the citizens have away,” said Clendenin. So, until there is a decision on the bill, all similar projects to Zayo Group are being paused at the moment in Wichita, KAKE reported.
“We’ve got enough poles in our right-of-way already. We want them to be able to ask them to co-locate on existing polls,” said Janzen. “This legislation as it sits right now, depending on how it’s interpreted by attorneys of either side, that’s what it’ll come down to, does not give us that ability to limit height. It does not give us the ability to ask them to co-locate. It would basically allow them to put in all new poles.”
The bill was received by the Governor’s Office this week. He has ten calendar days, until April 8, to sign the bill into law, veto the bill, or allow the bill to become law without his signature.
Reader Interactions