Georgia Becomes the 24th State to Enact Small Cell Legislation

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed legislation Friday designed to expand broadband internet access to rural areas throughout the state, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The measures were enacted at a ceremony in Dahlonega, GA, a mountainous area in the northern part of the state known to have spotty connectivity.  Senate Bill 66, allows telecom firms to set up small cell equipment on public land. But critics say the measure falls short of subsidizing internet service in rural parts of the state without adequate wireless infrastructure, the Constitution reported.

The Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA) praised the Governor for his action. “WIA commends Gov. Kemp  for expeditiously signing  Georgia’s small cell bill into law. Georgia joins  23 other states in adopting a legislative measure that puts the state on the path to 5G readiness. This legislation  will help to bring  jobs, economic growth, and innovation to  the Peach  State,” said WIA President and CEO Jonathan Adelstein. Continue Reading

TV White Spaces Coveted By Broadcasters For NextGen TV

 The NAB urged the FCC to allow television stations to use TV White Spaces, where available, to help in the transition to Next Gen television transmission. The broadcast’s lobby’s gripe with the agency was in response to what NAB said were “erroneous arguments” made by the Open Technology Institute at New America.

NAB disputes the OTI assertion that the FCC’s 2016 Next Gen TV Notice of Proposed Rulemaking “did not request comment on whether or not to give broadcasters vacant channels for the transition to ATSC 3.0.” The broadcast association says the FCC directly asked in the NPRM: “should we consider allowing broadcasters to use vacant in-band channels remaining in a market after the incentive auction repack to serve as temporary host facilities for ATSC 1.0 or ATSC 3.0 programming by multiple broadcasters?”  Continue Reading

Who Sits on the Throne For Most Fiber-Lit Buildings?

For the third year in a row, it's AT&T, reports ChannelPartnersOnline.com, with Crown Castle climbing the charts at number seven.  While there has been some jockeying from year-to-year, the top contenders remain, in order: AT&T, Verizon, Spectrum Enterprise, CenturyLink, Comcast, Cox, Crown Castle Fiber, Frontier, Zayo, and Altice USA. To make the list, the fiber providers had to wrap up the previous year with at least 10,000 fiber-lit buildings in the United States.

The challenge defined "fiber-lit" as "a commercial site or data center that has on-net optical fiber connectivity to a network provider’s infrastructure, plus active service termination equipment onsite.” The definition did not include cell towers, small cell arrangement, private installations, and other alternatives.

VSG Principal, Rosemary Cochran, stated: "Following a flurry of mergers and acquisitions, fiber providers focused on new build-outs in 2018, to meet customer demand for higher-speed dedicated access to business services and to support 5G pilots.” She added that the wealth of buildings that are not yet fiber-lit represents a true opportunity for providers to step in and offer their services.

Additionally, 13 companies qualified for recognition with 2,000-9,999 U.S. fiber lit commercial buildings. They include: Atlantic Broadband, Cincinnati Bell, Cleareon, Cogent, Consolidated Communications, FiberLight, FirstLight, GTT, IFN, Logix Fiber Networks, Segra, Unite Private Networks and Uniti Fiber.  Comments? Email Us.

High Flying Tower Market Slows Its Roll

Shares of American Tower (NYSE:AMT) opened 1.2 percent lower premarket yesterday after Wells Fargo Securities downgraded them to Market Perform from Outperform. AMT shares, however, are up 22.7 percent in the past three months and up 36.1 percent over the past six.

“Our tower dinner and data center broker events last week, seemed to take a bit of air out of the balloons for Q1 strength for both of these sectors,” said Jennifer Fritzsche, Senior Analyst, Wells Fargo Securities. “Our new price target on AMT is $196. The only tower stock we now are recommending is CCI; raising price target to $142. The towers peers trade at 23.6x 2019E AFFO and 21.9x 2020E AFFO, by our estimates. The multiples continue to push and set recent peak levels. Each of the tower stocks are trading at forward year AFFO multiples are the highest we have seen since 2017 (with AMT’s multiple at a 5-yr high),” she said.

Fritzsche said recent checks have indicated that while spending has continued, it has not realized the growth that was hoped for in 2019. She believes spending will ramp in 2020 but much has to be digested before this can be seen. As a result, she believes the setup for tower stocks should be viewed with a more conservative lens as her analysts struggle to see near-term drivers for further multiple expansion from these levels. Continue Reading

President, Pai Lay Out Next Steps to Speed 5G, With NATE Climbers in Spotlight

President Donald Trump put to rest Friday any hints that the federal government might privatize 5G networks. In a speech at the White House, Trump said, “We don’t want to do that because it won’t be as good or as fast” as what private investment can accomplish.

When members of the administration floated that as a possibility earlier this year, several FCC Commissioners, including Chairman Ajit Pai, and industry, opposed it.

With members of the National Association of Tower Erectors standing behind him wearing their harnesses, hardhats and other safety gear, Trump said 5G will be “more secure and resilient” than 4G and will “create astonishing opportunities for our people.”

Trump said: “The FCC is taking very bold action,” to free up more spectrum for 5G and reduce regulatory barriers to wireless infrastructure deployment. FCC action to streamline local permitting means, “They must now approve physical infrastructure within 90 days,” as opposed to the three or four years it sometimes takes, the President said. “And there is now a cap on unreasonable fees” local governments sometimes charge to approve small cells in a public right-of-way. Continue Reading

Tax Court Reduces AT&T Cell Tower Assessments By $1.75M

Although the tax man is coming for many of us in a few days, AT&T Mobility got a reprieve Wednesday after a Missouri Tax Court ruled they were not responsible for $1.75 million in assessed property taxes. The ruling covers over two dozen towers sites the carrier owns across five counties in the north central region of the state. The court ruled the counties did not follow federal guidelines in evaluating the sites.

The case of AT&T Mobility vs the Boards of Equalization of Caldwell, Daviess, Harrison, Henry, and Mercer counties (BOEs), ruled in the carrier’s favor after presenting, “substantial and persuasive evidence rebutting the BOE’s presumption of correct assessment” and established the ”true value in money” of their property.  Litigation on the case began in 2016.

The Court said AT&T argued that the proper method for valuing the subject property in these appeals was the cost approach using the replacement-cost-new-less-depreciation (RCNLD) method as determined by the company’s appraisal expert.  AT&T further argued that the counties presented no substantial and persuasive evidence to rebut their findings. The counties believed a correlation existed between AT&T’s revenue from the operation and use of the subject property and the value of the subject property. They posited that a 15-year life should apply to the subject property resulting in values higher than those they had initially assessed. Continue Reading

WIA, EWA Battle Over 800 MHz Land Mobile Applications

By Jim Fryer, Managing Editor, Inside Towers In a statement issued yesterday by the Enterprise Wireless Alliance (EWA), the association expressed frustration at how various frequency advisory committees (FAC’s) have been unable to reach a consensus on processing 800 MHz applications for the Expansion/Guard Band for land mobile use. The EWA singled out the Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA) as an unsupportive entity among the FAC’s.  The EWA fears the inaction will produce hundreds of mutually exclusive applications that will have to be sorted out one-by-one without a clear standard for determining priority.

“The opportunity to arrive at a consensus among the Business/Industrial and Public Safety frequency advisory committees (FACs) on how best to process 800 MHz Expansion/Guard Band (EB/GB) applications that avoid mutual exclusivity remains elusive after one year of effort,” the statement read. The EWA said that last week, during a meeting with a majority of the certified FACs in attendance, the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (WTB) staff informed the FACs that Commission leadership had rejected the “round-robin” application approach.  EWA said it was because it was believed that it would prejudice FACs with a greater number of applications to process and possibly cause customers to move their applications to another FAC. Continue Reading

Vandals Cut Guy Wires to Bring Down Tower For Scrap Resell

According to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, three men were arrested and accused of breaking into an inactive 150-foot tower last Wednesday. The trio allegedly cut the guy wires, causing the tower to crash into the on-site shed and then returned to the scene on Saturday to steal aluminum, copper and other scrap metal from the site, according to WALA-TV.

Lt. Bobby Jeter said it’s one of the stranger cases he’s ever seen. “I got in law enforcement when I got out of the service in ’96. I’ve never seen a cell phone tower cut down before,” he said.

A nearby resident called investigators when the individual heard activity at the site Saturday afternoon. Deputies and McIntosh police then closed in on the suspected thieves, reported WALA.  Continue Reading

Amazon Joins the Space Race in Satellite-Delivered Broadband

Amazon is throwing its hat in the ring, or better yet, into the stratosphere, to develop satellite-delivered broadband connectivity. Named “Project Kuiper,” the effort was discovered when Amazon submitted three sets of filings with the International Telecommunication Union last month by the FCC on behalf of Washington, D.C.-based Kuiper Systems LLC, reports GeekWire.

The ITU oversees worldwide satellite operations and would need to approve the constellation. The FCC has not yet taken action on the project.

According to the filings, Amazon plans to launch more than 3,200 satellites into low Earth orbit. The satellites will provide "low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world," an Amazon spokesperson stated to GeekWire. “This is a long-term project that envisions serving tens of millions of people who lack basic access to broadband internet. We look forward to partnering on this initiative with companies that share this common vision.” Continue Reading

Cancer Story Out of California Hits National TV and International Papers

UPDATE The Weston Elementary cancer story continues to find its way into new and bigger media outlets including the London Daily Mail.  The parents have rallied around and referenced an engineer, Eric Windheim, whom they hired whose credentials were examined and critiqued in Inside Towers’ Thursday story “Are School Parents Getting the Wrong Info From EMF’ers?” Last Thursday, CBS This Morning aired “Cell tower behind cancer scare at 1 school?” The parents, understandably teary eyed over their respective sons’ unexplained illnesses, were juxtaposed with pictures of the site which Sprint has since agreed to remove. CBS talked to Sprint’s Network Project Manager Dharma Nordell who said three tests have shown the tower is operating 100 times below the federal limit.
“Does Sprint believe that tower could be causing cancer?” the CBS correspondent asked her.
“Absolutely not,” Nordell said. “It is not a safety concern to the community but we do hear the community’s concerns, so we’re quickly working to relocate the tower.” Continue Reading

Report: U.S. Tied with China in Global 5G Race

A year ago, the U.S. was behind several other countries, including China and South Korea, when it came to  5G readiness. Now, America has made strides and is tied for “first” place with China, according to a   new report from telecom research firm Analysys Mason, which conducted the analysis on behalf of CTIA. Making enough spectrum available to America’s wireless industry over the next five years will help secure 5G leadership, as well as add $391 billion to the U.S. economy and create 1.8 million new jobs, according to the research. CTIA President/CEO Meredith Attwell Baker cites efforts by the administration, Congress and the  FCC for the progress. Those efforts include FCC actions to modernize its telecommunications infrastructure siting policies and spur  industry investment. In March and September of 2018, the FCC updated its rules to treat small cells differently than macro towers, easing small cell deployment by speeding the approval process and capping siting fees in a  public ROW. Also, more than 20 states have looked to the agency’s rules as guidelines for their small cell infrastructure deployment rules. Continue Reading

Bills Introduced to Permit Prisons to Use Cell Phone Jammers

Lawmakers in Congress introduced legislation to prevent contraband cell phone use in prisons. The measure sponsored by Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR), along with Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), allows state and federal prisons to use cell phone jamming systems. Representative David Kustoff (R-TN) and William Timmons (R-SC) introduced companion legislation in the House.

The use of contraband cell phones is widespread in both federal and state prison facilities, say corrections officials. More than 14,000 devices were confiscated in California prisons in 2017. Inmates have used contraband cell phones to conduct illegal activities, including ordering hits on individuals outside of the prison walls, running illegal drug operations, conducting illegal business deals, and organizing escapes which endanger correctional employees, other inmates, and members of the public, say corrections officials and lawmakers. Continue Reading

Senators Introduce Bill to Block 5G Nationalization

A bi-partisan group of Senators introduced a bill to prevent the federal government from nationalizing 5G and deploying its own network.

Two advisors to the President, Karl Rove and campaign manager Brad Pascale, are among “several high-profile” supporters of a government-backed plan to have the federal government manage the sharing of 5G airwaves with wireless providers, reports Politico.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow does not support the effort. Rove has been calling congressional offices to warn against bipartisan efforts to ban the nationalizing of 5G, according to the account.

The 5G battle occurs as the U.S. government wrestles with how to secure 5G networks from potential spying through gear made by Chinese telecoms Huawei and ZTE. Sen. John Cornyn, (R-TX), along with Sen. Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC), and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA), introduced the Secure 5G and Beyond Act (S-893). Continue Reading