5G wireless: Separating fact from fiction for cities and states

The Federal Communications Commission just gave the wireless infrastructure effort a lift by streamlining the rules for deploying small cells. I found last week’s editorial by the mayor of San Jose (CA) quite odd. Mayor Sam Liccardo argued that the new FCC rules to encourage faster deployment are an industry effort to “usurp control over these coveted public assets and utilize publicly owned streetlight poles for their own profit, not the public benefit.” But the new streamlining rules do no such thing. Public rights of way will still be public. Cities and states will still have the same access as private firms, just as they had before. And who will benefit from the private investment of some $275 billion dollars in new wireless networks? That’s right — the public. Too often, cities are blocking access to these rights of way, unless firms pay up. These government games are the very obstacles to deployment that the FCC rule is meant to fix.