Parity For Cablers, FCC Cuts Telecom Pole Rates

Just as turkeys were being prepared for the oven last week, the FCC reheated an issue leftover from 2011 when it was petitioned by industry advocates to realign the rates telecoms pay utility companies to be on their poles and bring parity to cable companies. Late Tuesday, the commission issued its long awaited, much discussed 44-page decision which effectively reduced telecom rates to what cable providers pay. What’s really behind all of it is the commission’s desire to promote deployment of broadband service nationwide.

“The 2011 revisions sought to bring the telecom and cable rates into parity,” the FCC said in explaining its new rule. “In the intervening time, we have seen that our revisions did not fully achieve that objective. Today, we take the next logical step in achieving the goals set forth in 2011.” The commission added, “We additionally act to support incentives for deployment of broadband facilities, particularly in rural areas, and to harmonize regulatory treatment between states where the Commission regulates the rates, terms, and conditions for pole attachments and states where such matters are regulated by the state.” The Commission said subjecting cable operators to higher pole attachment rates “merely because they also provide telecommunications services, such as broadband Internet access, could deter investment in states subject to Commission pole regulation, which would undermine the Commission’s broadband deployment policy. By keeping pole attachment rates unified and low, we further our overarching goal to accelerate deployment of broadband by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and promoting competition.” Continue Reading

Sprint Unveils LTE Plus Network

Sprint last week announced deployment of its LTE Plus network in “77 major markets,” promising faster service – double the network capacity and speed with peak speeds in excess of 100Mbps on devices capable of performing at that rate, strong service with smart antenna technology at 2.5GHz, and more reliable service using three bands of spectrum – 1.9GHZ for broad coverage, 800MHz for better indoor service, and 2.5GHz for even faster data speeds.


Spring’s CTO Dr. John Saw made the announcement on the carrier’s news site. He said LTE Plus, “takes advantage of our rich tri-band spectrum portfolio, and it uses some of the world’s most advanced technologies in wireless such as carrier aggregation and antenna beamforming.” He added, “Simply stated, while our competitors are sending LTE data meant for a specific customer to everyone in a sector, we are able to transmit more directive beams to exactly where our customers are located.” Continue Reading

Analyst: SBA’s ‘Ferrari Hits Speed Bump, Shares Priced Like A Ford’

If a tower company’s growth rate was compared to a car engine accelerating “zero to 60 mph in six seconds,” then SBA Communications might be a reversal of sorts, like 60-to- zero growth in four quarters. That’s the way Macquarie Securities analyst Kevin Smithen put it in his Friday afternoon research report headlined “Tower ‘Ferrari hits a speed bump but now priced like a ‘Ford.’” He said he and his research team spent the past week and a half researching the company to determine “what happened to SBAC’s premium growth rate.” Finally, he had “a long call with CEO Jeff Stoops yesterday (Thursday, November 19), we are now convinced that SBAC is seeing a pause in 2016 US growth almost entirely due to its lack of an MLA (master lease agreement) with AT&T. This fact also hurts its site augmentation revenue due to a more a compressed D&A schedule on this segment than peers (SBAC at 2.5 years vs. peers at 10 years).” Continue Reading here.

Spectrum Auction Mania, Sniping All the Way

T-Mobile wants the FCC to prevent Verizon Wireless from bidding on reserved Spectrum in a dozen U.S. markets. In a November 16 letter to the FCC, T-Mobile attorney Trey Hanbury of the DC law firm of Hogan Lovells told FCC it “incorrectly identified Verizon as reserve eligible” in 12 markets including Oklahoma City, OK, Brownsville, TX, Bozeman, MT, Springfield, MA, and Minot, ND among others. Hanbury provided a list of corrections to the list of nationwide carriers qualified to bid on reserve spectrum in the hope of “protecting against excessive concentration of low-band spectrum holdings by the nation’s dominant wireless providers while insuring competitive bidding.”
Continue reading here.

CTIA Rejects Higher FCC Regulatory Fees

The Wireless Association said taxes on wireless consumers are already too high and cable companies should pick up a greater share of the tab that it takes to keep the FCC funded, not the wireless world. The discussion was sparked by the commission’s budgeting process and the “Assessment and Collection of Regulatory Fees for fiscal year 2015.” In its review, the FCC laid out how much it proposes to spend for its Media Bureau ($120.15 million); Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB) $132.81 million; Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (WTB) $69.07 million; and the International Bureau (IB) $18.56 million.


Both the American Cable Association (ACA) and the NAB have said CTIA-The Wireless Association should pay more. In fact, NAB said it should pay less because if some 200-to-400 TV stations go off the air as a result of the spectrum auction on March 29, the remaining stations will have a higher burden of regulatory fees to pay, said a BNA/Bloomberg report last week. NAB said, “Indeed, the only equitable approach is for the regulatory fees to ‘follow the spectrum.’ The spectrum to be repurposed through the incentive auction will benefit the wireless service providers.”
Continue reading here.

Judge to AT&T: See You in Court

 Inside Towers told you on November 6, how an AT&T attorney told a Philadelphia judge two days earlier that the carrier had “no presence” in the Keystone State and should be released from a Pennsylvania lawsuit brought by fallen tower climber Thomas Jeglum. Jeglum was employed by JTI Telecommunications as a tower technician, performing maintenance, installation, repair and upgrade to telecommunications towers and related infrastructure.

He was part of a crew working on a 51-foot tower in Allentown, PA, on June 15, 2013 when the rung on a detachable ladder came loose, causing him to fall more than 50 feet. He was critically injured and in a coma, miraculously waking just before Christmas 2013 to have a Christmas Day wedding to the mother of his children in the hospital. Read more here.

NY Appeals Court Invokes Telecom Act, Clears East Fishkill Tower

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York on Tuesday handed the tower industry a significant victory by embracing a lower court’s ruling earlier this year on an effective prohibition claim made by a tower company after a town denied its application to build a 150-foot cell tower for Verizon Wireless.

A three-judge Appeals Court panel denied an appeal by the town of East Fishkill, NY, after a lower court, the U..S District Court for the Southern District of New York, ruled on January 30 the town’s denial to Homeland was effectively prohibiting it from providing wireless services in violation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The landmark decision demands the town immediately issue Homeland Towers LLC and its tenant, Verizon Wireless, a permit to build the tower but it also sets a precedent for all similar cases going forward that courts will generally interpret the Spectrum Act in the same manner.

“We are thrilled that the Second Circuit adopted Homeland and Verizon’s position regarding the significance of the service to be provided, looking at the gap’s physical size, the number of wireless users affected by the gap, the location of the gap, drop call or failure rates and other real metrics associated with providing reliable wireless services to the public,” Christopher Fisher, one of four attorneys with the New York-based firm of Cuddy + Feder, LLP, who represented the plaintiffs, said. “This is a critical advancement of the law, particularly when it comes to regulatory barriers to services being provided in all wireless infrastructure scenarios including towers, DAS, small cells, whether it be coverage or capacity situations.” Continue reading here.