WASHINGTON-A leading congressional telecommunications policy maker said Congress should pass legislation that would allow a “national tower-siting policy to ensure complete coverage and universal service.”
Rep. Michael Oxley (R-Ohio), vice chairman of the House telecommunications subcommittee, made his comments to telecom lawyers gathered for the annual Institute on Telecommunications Policy & Regulation presented by the Practicing Law Institute.
Oxley later told reporters that he does not have any specifics for a tower-siting policy, but “we need to face up to the problem and create a seamless wireless network. The current network is inefficient, it costs the economy money and it is frustrating to the consumers.”
A former FCC Commissioner, Rachelle B. Chong, also endorsed the idea of a national siting policy at the PLI panel.
“I think we have had a lot of delays” in fixed-wireless deployment because of siting difficulties, Chong said.
Chong, who is now general counsel and vice president of government affairs for BroadBand Office Inc., said federal guidelines are needed that would give direction to local governments. She also believes the public needs to be educated on the health effects of wireless technologies, including towers.
The Federal Communications Commission is unlikely to do anything that may be seen as interfering with local zoning authority, said Bryan N. Tramont, legal adviser to FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth.
“We are particularly reluctant to step in on zoning,” said Tramont.
Tramont noted carriers “have made a compelling case on historic preservation.” He believes the FCC “will look at this on a case-by-case basis.”
The rules for historic preservation may be more clear after last week’s publication of regulations by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation in the Federal Register.
The regulations are not much different than those that were said to be enacted illegally more than a year ago. This is not surprising, said John F. Clark, outside counsel on tower issues to the Personal Communications Industry Association.
ACHP “proposed to re-draft the former rules in their entirety and it has largely done so. … Unfortunately, the advisory council gave very short shrift to addressing the many thoughtful comments from both government and industry protesting that the council’s Section 106 process goes beyond Congress’ intent,” Clark told RCR Wireless News.
Verizon Wireless was also disappointed with how the regulations turned out.
John T. Scott III, Verizon Wireless vice president and deputy general counsel for regulatory law, said Verizon had urged ACHP to carve out an exemption for collocations on existing towers. The commission rejected this request, Scott said, instead favoring an overarching agreement on towers sited on historic lands.
ACHP staff hopes to draft a nationwide programmatic agreement to be considered at the organization’s March meeting in Little Rock.
Verizon’s request may have been prompted by a situation Scott related to the PLI audience.
“We are trying to collocate along the Garden State Parkway … the New Jersey State historic preservation office says the Garden State Parkway is a historic site,” said Scott. The Garden State Parkway is largely an urban freeway in northern New Jersey.
With all of the negative talk about tower sitings, Brian Fontes, vice president for federal relations for Cingular Wireless, said things are going fairly well with tower sitings.
In the end, Tramont believes that the industry has experienced the extremes on either end of the tower siting debate-with both no local-government input and applications being delayed by too much local government input-and that a more reasonable approach will be forth coming.
Other topics widely discussed at the PLI conference included the FCC’s merger review process and future FCC reorganization and/or reform.
“The FCC’s merger review [process] is, in a word, a disgrace,” said Oxley.
