FCC angers cities and towns with $2 billion giveaway to wireless carriers

[douglas9]

Cities will get less revenue, and carriers won't face any new requirements

The Federal Communications Commission's plan for spurring 5G wireless deployment will prevent city and town governments from charging carriers about $2 billion worth of fees.

The FCC proposal, to be voted on at its meeting on September 26, limits the amount that local governments may charge carriers for placing 5G equipment such as small cells on poles, traffic lights, and other government property in public rights-of-way. The proposal, which is supported by the FCC's Republican majority, would also force cities and towns to act on carrier applications within 60 or 90 days.

The FCC says this will spur more deployment of small cells, which "have antennas often no larger than a small backpack." But the commission's proposal doesn't require carriers to build in areas where they wouldn't have done so anyway.

Philadelphia is one of numerous local governments that objects to the FCC plan.

"The City respectfully disagrees with the Commission's interpretation of 'fair and reasonable' compensation," Philadelphia officials told the commission this week. "For many cities, public rights-of-way are the most valuable and commonly used public asset."

The FCC plan proposes up-front application fees of $100 for each small cell and annual fees of up to $270 per small cell. The FCC says this is a "reasonable approximation of [localities'] costs for processing applications and for managing deployments in the rights-of-way." Cities that charge more than that would likely face litigation from carriers and would have to prove that the fees are a reasonable approximation of all costs and "non-discriminatory."

But, according to Philadelphia, those proposed fees "are simply de minimis when measured against the costs that the City incurs to approve, support, and maintain the many small cell and distributed antenna system (DAS) installations in its public rights-of-way."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/09/fcc-angers-cities-and-towns-with-2-billion-giveaway-to-wireless-carriers/

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Interesting article. Was wondering how does Phil (the city) maintain the DAS installations? ...

I thought that the carriers installing these systems would maintain, and thus pay a per pole fee to the city or whatever entity that owned the pole/rooftops/other localities? If the city (Phil) does allow its rooftops of various city owned facilities to be used as a site to place towers, DAS facilities, etc., then okay, they have to maintain the buildings etc. (like everyone else).

How the FCC came up w/ the dollar figures as mentioned in the article above is ambiguous, but also perhaps the fees charged by cities is excessive too, that is, they are treating this like too much of a cash cow, and perhaps are hampering the advent of new technologies, simply by the excessive fees. If the fees are too excessive, carriers generally will bypass or all together share a facility together and then split out the costs among themselves. Thus, less facilities are built, perhaps allowing some blind spots in the networks being created, etc.

Existing interconnection agreements may already say what as to what may or may not be charged, so I'm not sure if the FCC even has jurisdiction anyways in cases such as this. Perhaps instead of the FCC, the local public utility commissions also have some say in this matter.

Carriers do have the right to pick and choose the best interconnection agreements (or portions of) that they wish to honor. This is what I dealt w/ when I negotiated interconnection agreements w/ carriers when I worked w/ a major carrier, and this was a common practice. These interconnection agreements would detail every single thing about a physical connection, how they were to be made, to be maintained, how much it would cost, etc., etc., etc. The FCC I thought only had jurisdiction in interstate traffic, so I'm not really sure what the FCC w/ its republican controlled agenda is going for or after.

And, what's funny about this, is that no additional rural development is mandated. I would think that expanding the digital footprint would be paramount to all, after all, this is like the railroads of old, where they opened up the frontier, and allowed economic development to flourish. Isn't that what we want today, w/ the advent of more and more digital technologies?

[ret5hd]

2. I made a long distance drive down I-20 and back this week...

There were more than a few stretches where I had no service. Fuckin' I-20...a primary artery of our nations circulatory system! It might be that these areas were covered by other carriers (mine is Sprint), but I saw zero bars in some rural areas.

I've seen reporting of some rural children having to be driven miles to a remote parking area to get service so they can sit in a vehicle to do research etc for homework.

These situations are unacceptable. You want the rights to use the peoples airwaves? You will have complete coverage of the nations interstate highway system by year 20XX. You will have complete coverage of the nations U.S. highway system by year 20XX + 1. You will have complete coverage of the individual states highway systems by year 20XX + 3. You will have complete coverage of the individual county road systems by year 20XX + 5.

Think it can't be done? Watch how fast they send workers scurrying up those poles and/or building towers if they actually thought they would lose their licenses.