Heavy-handed zoning for small cells is holding back connected cities and hurting consumers.
Whenever you see “one size fits all” on a label, you should be a bit skeptical. The last two pairs of gardening gloves I’ve bought came in a single size, and they ended up being too small for me and too big for my wife. My kids eventually turned them into puppets. It’s clear that one size ended up meeting no one’s needs (except as fun time for my kids), and the same is true about the one-size-fits-all rules that are so prevalent at the municipal and county levels for reviewing and approving wireless installations.
Most of these rules were developed years and years ago to address a single type of project: large macro sites that provide wide coverage to large chunks of a given city or town. But times have changed. Today, wireless infrastructure solutions come in all shapes and sizes to meet the needs of residents and businesses — including small cells. This technology is designed to enhance service for a localized area (for example a specific building or neighborhood) to fix coverage gaps or address special bandwidth capacity needs. Each of these projects only affects a relatively small number of people, yet many municipalities and counties treat permitting for these sites the same as they do typical large macro sites. This approach ends up hurting consumers, businesses, telecom providers and the zoning/regulatory boards themselves.
The local regulations that are in place today are clearly well intentioned. After all, cities and towns and counties should advocate for their citizens and create rules that reflect the public’s needs and values. Assessing the impact of large-scale wireless projects that impact thousands or even tens of thousands of residents should be a deliberate process. But does that same process make sense when a given small cell installation impacts a single building or residential street?
With very few exceptions the vast majority of local government bodies have a one-size-fits-all approach to wireless. Unfortunately, these zoning practices are neither practical nor cost-effective for small cell projects and the result is a large backlog in small cell implementations across the country. For example, major metropolitan areas in the Pacific Northwest have approved very few small cell projects with no real path forward for broader, more efficient adoption of the technology. These are surprising and somewhat discouraging facts seeing as this area is among the most tech-forward areas in the U.S.
The culprit in both cases above is an outdated approval process that is better suited to large-scale wireless deployments. The one-size-fits-all approach negatively impacts everyone involved in the process:
• Residents in neighborhoods with poor cell coverage (due to surrounding topography, for example) remain stuck with poor coverage as providers struggle to get approval for micro installations to improve reception in that area.
• Businesses that have poor indoor wireless coverage must wait in vain for necessary approvals for small cells that would solve those problems, all the while apologizing repeatedly to customers and partners for the poor connectivity in their building that negatively impacts communications.
• Telecom companies must tackle a mountain of paperwork required for zoning approvals, presenting the same volume of documentation for a small installation, which might only take an hour, as for a macro site project that could take months. Then repeat the process dozens of times in the attempt to complete small cell installations in multiple locations for a better customer experience.
• The reviewing bodies themselves are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of applications coming in, because a process originally designed to handle a handful of tower requests per year now must respond to dozens of requests for small-scale projects.
This broken process creates frustration for all parties involved and the scale of the problem is poised to grow as the need for more small-scale installations increases. With escalating bandwidth needs created by the proliferation of smartphones and the “internet of things” as well as infill construction attracting residents to portions of cities without robust wireless infrastructure, small cells are a solution we need to be able to implement efficiently.
At the federal level, the regulatory trend is clearly toward having a more flexible process that takes into account the size of installations. For example, the Federal Communications Commission recently announced a decision to amend its review process for certain small cell implementations at historic sites. This is a small but important step that acknowledges that small cell implementations are fundamentally different than macro site projects and deserve a more streamlined approval process.
At the local level, cities and counties in even the most tech-forward cities have been very slow to adapt their policies. As I mentioned, the approval processes for reviewing bodies are giant roadblocks to small cells, which is a recipe for any city to quickly fall behind in an age where wireless connectivity is so clearly connected to home values and attracting businesses. One promising example, though, is a decision in San Jose, California, to update zoning processes to speed up the deployment of small cells, particularly in areas that support underserved populations that don’t receive adequate capacity and coverage from traditional towers. San Jose may be establishing a new model for flexible zoning that is adapted to small cell technology – one that balances regulatory needs with the needs of its citizens.
I hope this is a positive sign of what is to come as other cities and towns follow suit. Everyone benefits when local governments leave behind the one-size-fits-all approach and establish separate, more sensible processes for reviewing and approving small-scale projects — creating a glove that actually matches the size of the project at hand. That would be a win-win-win-win proposition for residents, local businesses, telecom companies and the reviewing bodies.
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Image source: alhovik / 123RF Stock Photo
