FCC Releases Model Tower Siting Rules for State and Local Governments
The FCC Friday released model rules for broadband and wireless facility siting aimed at state and local governments. “This provision will accelerate deployment and delivery of high-speed mobile broadband to communities across the nation,” the FCC said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bocbtp). “This action will create greater certainty and predictability for providers that today invest more than $25 billion per year in mobile infrastructure, one of the largest U.S. sectors for private investment.” The commission also launched a proceeding looking at how to expedite the use of temporary cell towers, cells on wheels (COWs) and cells on light trucks (COLTs), to expand cell capacity during big events like the Presidential Inauguration or the Super Bowl.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
"Providing more certainty to industry and municipalities, and more flexibility to carriers to meet extraordinary, short-term service needs will accelerate private and public investment to strengthen our nation’s communications networks,” said Chairman Julius Genachowski. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said she was particularly pleased the agency is releasing model siting rules. “These off-the-rack model ordinances should help harmonize President [Barack] Obama’s Executive Order 13616 for facility siting on federal land and property, wireless facility policies in Section 6409 of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act, and the Commission’s existing shot clock rules for tower siting,” she said. “By streamlining this process with model rules we can provide a way forward for state and local governments looking to oversee deployments within their borders. But more than that -- we can make progress by promoting a more predictable set of laws all across the country.”
"This is going to make a real difference in the field on meeting the needs of people that are demanding huge amounts of wireless broadband data,” said PCIA President Jonathan Adelstein in an interview Friday. “You can’t build this infrastructure to meet the growing demand and the FCC did everything right. They clarified the definitions that will speed putting new antennas on existing infrastructures. They're thinking forward about small cells and DAS, distributed antenna systems. I think the commission really gets it here. This is a whole agenda to promote infrastructure deployment right when it’s needed most.” Adelstein is a former FCC commissioner. The FCC already had in place “common sense” definitions for what it means to collocate on a tower or modify a tower, Adelstein said. “Localities were not always following them,” he said. “But now everyone is going to know what it means.” He recalled a recent discussion about 4G deployment with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. “He told me this was the fastest deployment of new technology that they've ever done,” he said.
CTIA had asked the FCC to launch a proceeding on quicker siting for temporary towers, noted CTIA Vice President Chris Guttman-McCabe. “As the American public relies on mobile wireless broadband services in more and more aspects of their lives, wireless infrastructure siting plays a central part in advancing broadband deployment, universal service and public safety,” he said.