The United South & Eastern Tribes (USET) objected at the FCC rece...

said industry representatives also have raised “noise objections” to a voluntary best practices agreement for tower siting on which the FCC has been working with USET for the past year. A draft NPA has been designed to streamline the review of tower siting decisions under Sec. 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. Wireless carriers earlier this month had told the FCC they were concerned about the scope of compliance requirements and FCC responsibilities that might be part of the NPA concerning tribal participation procedures as laid out in the best practices document. Requirements on applicants that entailed “unnecessary” delay or expense could be avoided if the NPA were adopted without the section on tribal participation to allow further development of this language, the wireless industry filing said. USET balked at this suggestion. “After making a tremendous effort to provide comments and to consult with the FCC, USET objects strongly to the notion that the programmatic agreement should now go forward without tribal provisions,” it said: “Why should our matters be dismissed after so much work, to be resolved at some uncertain date in the future, if at all? Tribal sites are just as important as other sites.” USET said it would be “deeply troubled” by a decision to leave tribes out of the NPA. “The voluntary best practices that USET has been developing with the FCC is an effort to draft a set of guidelines that would help both applicants and tribes to achieve their goals in a timely fashion,” it said.