With AT&T’s new ad campaign set to make DAS and small cells household words, wireless infrastructure trade organization PCIA and the HetNet Forum are asking the Federal Communications Commission to remove barriers to deployment. The trade associations are asking the FCC to streamline the environmental and historic preservation review process for distributed antenna systems and small cell installations, and to apply its shot clock rule to these as well.
In reply comments to the FCC’s query to Accelerating Broadband Deployment by Improving Wireless Facilities Policies, the commenters stated that they “recognize that distributed antenna systems and small cells are technologies that, at most, lightly touch the environment while reducing the need for new towers, and therefore streamlined review is appropriate.”
The commenters go on to assert that the FCC’s “current environmental and historic preservation review procedures needlessly delay the deployment of these technologies.” Specifically, PCIA and the HetNet Forum are asking for an exemption from the National Environmental Policy Act review of DAS and small cell facilities that meet a technology neutral, volume-based definition. They also support extension of collocation exclusion to utility poles and water towers.
Site location and acquisition is one of the key challenges mobile operators face as they densify networks with DAS and small cells. Public properties like utility poles, water towers, street lights and even park benches can all be of interest to carriers, as can private properties like billboards and church steeples.
PCIA and the HetNet Forum are also asking the FCC to apply its “shot clock” to DAS and small cell installations. The shot clock allows companies to take local agencies to court if they fail to approve an application for a new wireless site within five months. Localities have just three months to approve applications to add equipment to existing sites without triggering the shot clock.
These month’s action from PCIA and HetNet Forum follows a filing last month in which the two groups asked the agency to categorically exempt DAS and small cell installations from historic preservation and environmental review processes.
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