Remarks of Commissioner O'Rielly at Distributed Antenna Systems and Small Cell Solutions Workshop

Thank you for coming to the Federal Communications Commission to talk about a very important issue: Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) and small cell infrastructure citing. This is a topic that has been a priority of mine. In fact, there may be some at the Commission who would prefer that I not push so hard, but then again, what fun would that be? Sometimes the job of a Commissioner is to methodically move the ball forward; in other cases, such as this, we need to push for an up-tempo, high caliber outcome given the importance of the issue.

Despite the obvious need, the deployment of small cell technology has been somewhat slower than projected. In my meetings with industry participants, many have stated that the lack of progress is because of infrastructure siting challenges. This is why it is so important for the Commission to finish up the process to further exclude small cell and DAS systems from certain regulatory burdens before the upcoming fall. But, this proceeding alone is unlikely to fix all problems. I continue to hear legitimate complaints about localities placing hurdles in front of small cell deployments. Issues range from permitting problems and excessive fees to forced tolling agreements and de facto moratoria. Site approvals in rights-of-way, which are especially important for small cell systems, appear to be particularly problematic. Such cases are worthy of the Commission considering using its preemption authority.