Local governments have contentious relationships with the wireless industry. This love-hate dance gets more complicated daily. First off, governments seem to hate cell towers. Sure, people in the wireless industry can see their beauty, but for the most part, people like them working (perfectly) out of sight. The backlash from ugly towers largely introduced the word “collocation” to the wireless industry.
But wait, the city of Parma, Ohio, is suing Cingular Wireless L.L.C.-and trying for class-action status, mind you-because Cingular is threatening to terminate leases on overlapping towers it doesn’t need after it bought AT&T Wireless Services Inc. The lawsuit charges that Cingular is threatening to abandon the leases on these overlapping towers unless tower owners reduce their rent charges. It seems that Parma loves it towers-and the rent it gets from having them located on city property.
“At a time when state and local governments are pushed and squeezed from all sides, it is both baffling and sad to see a huge national corporation renounce its contractual obligations to these governments and attempt to cut off one of their vital revenue streams,” said Parma Law Director Tim Dobeck. (Yes, the city of Parma put out a press release on this. Maybe the city would get more sympathy if it didn’t use the phrase “overlapping cell sites.”)
If you listen to CTIA, it is wireless carriers that are getting pushed and squeezed from all sides as every municipality, county and state government attaches another tax, trying to wring another dime out of the wireless industry.
I’m not privy to the specific tower arrangements Cingular/AWS had with the city of Parma, but I can tell you this: The consolidation of those two carriers caused a drop in business for a number of companies (think of the drop-off in local newspaper advertising). Never mind the number of people out of work because jobs, like cell sites, were duplicated.
Perhaps the city of Parma doesn’t understand that rent costs for towers ultimately get passed on to the citizens of Parma. Perhaps Parma doesn’t know carriers have been “squeezing tower owners” on reduced rents for some time as they tried to reduce operating expenses. But I don’t know of any other tower owners that felt the matter was better handled in the courts rather than at the business table.
Meanwhile, cities are dabbling in the Wi-Fi business, much to the dismay of carriers that argue the telecom business is better left to business rather than government. The city of Parma-and its lawsuit-makes a good argument that government should stay out of the telecom business. Or at least that telecom should stay away from government.
