Advisory Committee Tells FCC to Take Down Deployment Barriers

From left: Ajit Pai, Mignon Clyburn and Jonathan Adelstein at the FCC’s 

Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee meeting. Photos by Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers

The FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee is closer to issuing recommendations to the FCC on how to reduce several types of regulatory barriers to broadband infrastructure deployment. The advisory group approved several draft recommendations at its third meeting of the year last Thursday and they plan to approve final recommendations at the next meeting on January 22 and 23, 2018.

Several FCC Commissioners addressed the all-volunteer group. Chairman Ajit Pai told the group as they began their all-day meeting: “The internet is poles, cables and physical infrastructure. Building these networks is hard and the government shouldn’t make it harder. When you find answers” to eliminating “barriers to wired and wireless infrastructure access will grow. That’s why it’s important that we get this right.” Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said even when the group handles all of the obstacles to pole attachments and access to rights-of-way, they “may be tempted to celebrate,” but that would be premature, “obscuring a simple reality that not every broadband problem is an infrastructure problem. For all Americans to be truly connected we cannot ignore … affordability.” 

WIA President Jonathan Adelstein chairs the Streamlining Federal Siting working group. Some 30 percent of the land in the U.S. is owned by the federal government and it’s often the last place infrastructure is sited due to varying and unpredictable fees and rates, lengthy application reviews and un-harmonized forms across agencies, to name a few reasons. “It’s a shame and we’re going to try to change that,” he said, noting the White House is supportive of the group’s efforts. “The administration wants to ensure implementation is consistent across all federal agencies.” Continue Reading