A new legal regime to manage and rationalize the deployment and use of cellular antenna infrastructure across Chilean cities is set to take effect this week with the enactment of the Towers Act. The new antenna law has been in discussion for over a decade, and this year it was approved by a large majority in Chile’s congress and, after approval of the Constitutional Court, it was signed by President Sebastián Piñera.
Last January, RCR Wireless News posted a story with analysts and key telecom players commenting about the law. Many agreed that the bill promotes improvements in reducing the visual impact of antennas in urban environments and encourages collocation, but also said it might significantly increase the cost of building towers.
Chilean minister of transport and telecommunications, Pedro Pablo Errazuriz, and the minister of housing and urban development, Rodrigo Perez Mackenna, stressed that the legislation reduces the urban impact of this infrastructure, as well as opens spaces for citizen participation at local level prior to delivery municipal permits a preventive and precautionary health of people setting a limit to the radio emissions that places Chile among the five most stringent in the OECD.
According to the new rules, companies need to adjust their legacy tower locations to be in compliance to the new rules. As noted by Minister Mackenna the new bill delivers real powers to municipalities to intervene in the process of installation of towers in their communal territory as these installations will require prior permission for each location.
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Minister Errazuriz noted that “In addition to protecting the urban landscape and the goodwill of the neighborhoods, the new law takes care the health of people in a precautionary manner as recommended by the World Health Organization, setting strict limits on the powers of the antennas.”
Among the most important aspects of the new law are the incentives for companies to use lower height brackets with consistent streetscape designs or to use existing third-party infrastructure in cities, preventing the increase in the number of towers.
The undersecretary of telecommunications, Jorge Atton, stressed that the new law aims to promote infrastructure sharing.
Under the new law, companies gain authorization with the local government to install towers over three-meters high in an urban community. Additionally, the law limits the period of time for companies to adjust their legacy towers located in densely populated and sensitive areas to be in compliance to the new rules.
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