Local agencies get more time to ponder FCC's wireless weed whacker

17 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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There’s more time to chime in on whether the Federal Communications Commission should consider further preemption of local authority over cell sites and other wireless facilities. Last month, the FCC moved forward on a request to do so made by Mobilitie, a wireless infrastructure company that has pushed the boundaries of ethics, if not legality, and the English language in its aggressive pursuit of permission to, among other things, plant towers in public right of ways.

A group that includes the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors asked for a couple of extra months to respond, and the FCC split the difference and granted a one month extension, to 7 March 2017 for the first round of comments.

So far, there hasn’t been a rush to submit comments. Only about 20 filings have been posted, and one of those is from a local government. Pokomoke City, a small community in Maryland, told a story that’ll be familiar to pretty much any agency that’s dealt with Mobilitie’s campaign to install 70,000 new U.S. cell sites for Sprint

Their initial requests were to locate new pole structures in the middle of our narrow public sidewalks – something we no longer allow. Their next proposal was to apply for a pole location on what appeared to be private property, expecting our small town, 4200, to provide title verification. The third was, after reporting to us that a specific location and height was vital, to then report they had selected a different location and changed height again. Their specs are a constantly moving target, and they wish to bank their infrastructure on the back of the town, rather than pay their way as all of the others do.

Lobbying groups for mobile carriers and wireless Internet service providers submitted preliminary amen comments; the rest appear to come from interested individuals.