WASHINGTON-The Personal Communications Industry Association last week attempted to neutralize legislation to curb antenna siting by telling Congress that consolidation in the tower business will reduce the number of wireless facilities in communities across the country in the future.
John Kelly, president of Crown Castle International Inc. and chairman of PCIA’s Site Owners and Managers Alliance, led a delegation that brought that message to lawmakers and their staffs last Tuesday.
The objective of the lobbying effort was twofold: to counter bills by Rep. Charles Bass (R-N.H) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and to take a proactive approach to a siting issue that members of Congress are increasingly tuning into as constituents complain about new transmitters in their neighborhoods.
Both bills would give local regulators greater control over antenna siting.
“It’s not just about cellular and PCS (personal communications services). It’s about other wireless interests,” Kelly told reporters.
Kelly said PCIA wants to dispel notions that the number of towers will increase as the Federal Communications Commission licenses more wireless carriers and that mobile phone firms are to blame for tower proliferation.
Kelly said a paradigm shift has occurred in the tower industry. That shift, he maintains, will stem the tide in tower construction. He explained that financial pressures, fueled by network buildout costs and auction debt, have prompted carriers to sell towers to Crown Castle and other third-party tower firms.
The latter companies have a built-in economic incentive to collocate as many antennas as possible on towers. In contrast, wireless carriers have been reluctant to collocate antennas for competitive reasons.
The rap against build-to-suit tower firms is their communications structures can be far taller than paging and mobile phone base stations, particularly when a TV broadcaster is accommodated on the facility. Kelly said the average height of towers owned by Crown Castle is 200 feet.
Kelly and Bruce McIntyre, president of Tower Innovations Inc., said lawmakers and others do not realize there are a plethora of entities-including public-safety, law enforcement and federal agencies-that occupy towers.
Despite that, mobile phone firms tend to be on the receiving end of complaints that wireless towers devalue home values, pose health risks and muck up the landscape.
Sheldon Moss, PCIA director of government relations on infrastructure issues, said Leahy’s bill is misguided.
“His views are well-known; he is firmly entrenched,” said Moss.
Neither the Bass bill nor the Leahy bill is expected to get out of the Commerce Committee in the respective chambers, meaning there likely will be an attempt by the two lawmakers to attach the measures to other legislation on the move.
Moss said Leahy’s staff did not attend an informal lunch for congressional aides on the siting issue.
