March was a big month for lobbyists visiting the Federal Communications Commission, which opened the doors to wireless special interest groups for “ex parte” meetings with agency staffers that, in turn, brief the three Republicans and two Democrats that serve as FCC commissioners.

Last month’s ex parte filings reveal strong evidence of a coordinated, well-financed campaign by America’s wireless operators and cable companies to get the FCC to ease off regulations governing forthcoming 5G networks, particularly with respect to where tens of thousands of “small cell” antennas will be installed to deliver the service.

Four industry trade groups and companies are part of the concerted campaign to scale back third party control over where 5G infrastructure will end up. Some want to strip local governments of their power to oversee where 5G infrastructure will be placed, while others seek the elimination of laws and regulations that give everyone from historical societies to Native American tribes a say where next generation wireless infrastructure will go. The one point all four interests agree on — favoring pro-industry policies that give wireless companies the power to flood local communities with wireless infrastructure applications that come with automatic approval unless denied for “good cause” within a short window of time, regardless of how overwhelmed local governments are by the blizzard of paperwork.

Here are the big players:

The Competitive Carriers Association (CCA)

The CCA is primarily comprised of rural, independent, and smaller wireless companies. In short, a large percentage of wireless companies not named AT&T or Verizon Wireless are members of CCA. The CCA’s chief goal is to protect the interests of their members, who lack the finances and political pull of the top two wireless companies in the U.S. CCA lobbyists met ex parte with the FCC multiple times, submitting seven filings about their March meetings.

CCA’s top priority is to get rid of what they consider burdensome regulations about where members can place cell towers and antennas. They also want a big reduction in costly environmental, tribal, and historic reviews that are often required as part of a wireless buildout application. CCA lobbyists argue that multiple interests have their hands on CCA member applications, and fees can become “exorbitant” even before some basic reviews are completed. The CCA claims there have been standoffs between competing interests creating delays and confusion.

Costs are a relevant factor for most CCA members, which operate regional or local wireless networks often in rural areas. Getting a return on capital investment in rural wireless infrastructure can be challenging, and CCA claims unnecessary costs are curtailing additional rural expansion.

NCTA – The Internet & Television Association

The large cable industry lobbyist managed to submit eight ex parte filings with the FCC in March alone, making the NCTA one of the most prolific frequent visitors to the FCC’s headquarters in Washington.

The NCTA was there to discuss the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band, which is of particular interest to cable companies like Charter Communications, which wants to get into the wireless business on its own terms. Cable lobbyists, under the pretext of trying to avoid harmful interference, want to secure a large percentage of the CBRS band for their licensed use, at the expense of unlicensed consumers and their wireless industry competitors.

The cable industry wants CBRS spectrum to be wide, spacious, and contiguous for its cable industry members, which should open the door to faster speeds. The lobbyists want to make life difficult for unlicensed use of the band, potentially requiring cumbersome use regulations or costly equipment to verify a lack of interference to licensed users. They also want their traffic protected from other licensed users’ interference.

CTIA – The Wireless Association

The wireless industry’s largest lobbying group made multiple visits to the FCC in March and filed 10 ex parte communications looking for a dramatic reduction in local zoning and placement laws for the next generation of small cells and 5G networks.

The CTIA has been arguing with tribal interests recently. Tribes want the right to review cell tower placement and the environmental impacts of new equipment and construction. The CTIA wants a sped-up process for reviewing cell tower and site applications with a strict 30-day time limit, preferably with automatic approval for any unconsidered applications after the clock runs out. Although not explicitly stated, there have been grumblings in the past that tribal interests are inserting themselves into the review process in hopes of collecting application and review fees as a new revenue source. Wireless companies frequently question whether tribal review is even appropriate for some applications.

Sprint has had frequent run-ins with tribal interests demanding several thousand dollars for each application’s review under the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), which is supposed to protect heritage and historical sites.

In Houston, Sprint deployed small cells around the NRG Stadium, but found itself paying fees to at least a dozen Indian Tribal Nations as part of the NHPA. The NHPA opens the door to a lot of Native Americans interests because of how the law is written. Any Tribal Nation can express an interest in a project, even when it is to be placed on public or private property that is not considered to be tribal land. In Houston, Sprint found itself paying $6,850 per small cell site, not including processing fees, which raised the cost to $7,535 per antenna location. Those fees only covered tribal reviews, not the cost of installation or equipment. Some tribes offered better deals than others. The Tonkawa Tribe has 611 remaining members, mostly in Oklahoma. But they sought and got $200 in review fees for the 23 small cell sites deployed around the stadium. The Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma, not Texas, charged $1,500 for the 23 applications it reviewed.

Sprint complains it has paid millions in such fees over the last 13 years and no tribe to date has ever asked to meet with Sprint or suggest one of its towers or cell sites would intrude on historic or tribal property.

“Tribal Nations are continuing to demand higher fees and designate larger and larger areas of interest,” says Sprint. “At present, there are no constraints on the amount of fees a Tribal Nation may require or the geographic areas for which it can require payment for review. The tribal historic review process remains in place even in situations—such as utility rights-of-way—where the Commission has exempted state historic review.”

The CTIA wants major changes to the NHPA and other regulations regarding cell tower and antenna placement before the stampede of 5G construction begins.

Verizon

Verizon has been extremely busy visiting with the FCC during the month of March, filing 10 ex parte communications, also complaining about the tribal reviews of wireless infrastructure.

Verizon argues it wants to expand wireless service, not effectively subsidize Native American tribes.

“The draft order’s provisions to streamline tribal reviews for larger wireless broadband facilities will likewise speed broadband deployment and eliminate costs, thus freeing up resources that can, in turn, be used to deploy more facilities,” Verizon argued in one filing.

Verizon has also been carefully protecting its most recent very high frequency spectrum buyouts. It wants the FCC to force existing satellite services to share the 29.1-29.25 GHz band for 5G wireless internet. Verizon has a huge 150 MHz swath of spectrum in this band, allowing for potentially extremely high-speed wireless service, even in somewhat marginal reception areas.

“Verizon assured the commission that even when sharing with other services, we would be able to make use of the 150 MHz of spectrum in this block to provide high-speed broadband service to American consumers,” said one filing.

Bad results for Frontier DSL in Nevada. (Source: Elko Residential Broadband Survey)

Only six Frontier Communications customers surveyed in Elko, Nev. gave the phone company an “A” for its DSL service, while 42% flunked Frontier for what they considered unacceptable internet service.

The Elko Broadband Action Team has surveyed residential and business customers about broadband performance and found widespread dissatisfaction with Frontier Communications over slow connections and service interruptions.

“I’m pretty disappointed in them,” said Elko councilman John Patrick Rice.

Businesses and residential customers were in close agreement with each other rating Frontier’s service, with nearly 87% complaining they endure buffering delays or slowdowns, especially when watching streaming video. When browsing web pages, nearly three-quarters of surveyed customers still found service lacking.

Among the complaints (Res)-Residential (Bus)-Business:

• Service interruptions: 74.43% (Res)/79.69% (Bus)
• Too slow/not receiving advertised speed: 72.16% (Res)/65.75% (Bus)
• Price: 63.64% (Res)/37.5% (Bus)
• Customer Service: 38.07% (Res)/45.31% (Bus)

The Nevada Attorney General’s Bureau of Consumer Protection received a steady stream of complaints about Frontier’s DSL service in the state over the past year.

Answering the survey question, “would you be interested in faster download and upload speeds at prices that are somewhat comparable to what you are paying now?” 97.87 percent of residential respondents said yes.

Frontier representatives responded to the survey results at a March 27 Elko City Council meeting.

“Frontier did recognize it could improve upstream and downstream flow and educated the council and the public on some of the issues,” Elko assistant city manager Scott Wilkinson said.

Gamiño (Image: Mayoral Photography Office)

New York City’s chief technology officer is fed up with a FCC broadband advisory board that is intentionally stacked with cable and phone company interests and has quit the panel after claiming his recommendations were ignored.

Miguel Gamiño Jr. wrote in his March 29 resignation letter that any further participation on the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) that doesn’t accept anything except the telecom industry’s agenda was a waste of his time.

“It is clear that despite good faith efforts by both the staff and members involved, the membership structure and meeting format of the BDAC has skewed the drafting of the proposed recommendations towards industry priorities without regard for a true public-private partnership.” Gamiño wrote. “These circumstances give me no choice but to step away from this committee in order to direct the City’s energy and resources to alternative forums that provide more productive opportunities for achieving the kind of cooperative progress in advancing broadband deployment in the public interest.”

He is the second major public official to call it quits on FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee. In January, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo stormed off the board claiming it only paid “lip service” to the concept of broadband expansion in the public interest. Liccardo accused the BDAC of being little more than an industry lobbying group being put in charge of shaping America’s future broadband policies.

“I have expressed concerns with other municipal colleagues in multiple meetings and documents that the makeup of the BDAC, with roughly 75 percent of members representing large telecommunications and cable companies or interests aligned with those companies, would result in recommendations unfavorable to localities looking to responsibly manage public rights-of-way to promote public safety, quality of life, and other priorities,” Gamiño added. “This has resulted in the BDAC producing pre-packaged one-size-fits all proposals that industry lobbyists have pushed nationwide rather than working in a cooperative fashion to find creative solutions to dynamic local issues.”

Gamiño noted that his working group of public officials had been effectively sidelined, and there has been no effort to replace Mayor Liccardo after he resigned three months ago. The final recommendations of the BDAC are likely to run contrary to the public interest, warned Gamiño.

“I am concerned that the current draft of the code could lead to municipalities entering into agreements with wireless providers that are counter to the interests of their constituents,” wrote Gamiño. “Most importantly, we do not believe that the recommendations will help close the digital divide. Therefore, we are not able to recommend that a municipality adopt the code without significant legal and financial analysis or for it to be referenced as a ‘model’ for legislatures, the FCC, or other regulatory bodies.”

The suggestion by two public officials that the BDAC effectively used them as ‘window dressing’ to legitimize the wireless industry’s agenda to ease restrictions on antennas and tower siting threatens the legitimacy of the Committee itself.

In Liccardo’s comments regarding his resignation, he also dismissed the BDAC as an industry-stacked, de facto wireless company lobbying group.

The BDAC already threatens to become a political football. In late January, Democratic FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn warned BDAC’s single standard for broadband expansion was unlikely to work in every community.

“As I have said many, many times before, one size does not fit all, and private industry infrastructure investments do not always flow to communities that are most in need,” Clyburn said.

Gov. Ivey signs SB149.

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey last week signed into law SB149, the Alabama Broadband Accessibility Act, authorizing the creation of a broadband accessibility grant program to be administered by the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs. The bill, sponsored by Senator Clay Scofield (R-District 9) and Representative Donnie Chesteen (R-District 87), also creates the Alabama Broadband Accessibility Fund.

According to a press release from the governor’s office, there are more than 842,000 people in Alabama without access to a wired connection capable of 25 Mbps download speeds. Over 1 million people in Alabama have access to only one wired provider and another 276,000 people don’t have any wired internet providers available where they live.

“The internet is vital to economic development, health, education, and to be honest, all areas of our modern life. This common sense legislation will help us attract new broadband to areas that need it most, especially in rural Alabama,” Governor Ivey said. “I congratulate Senator Scofield and Representative Chesteen for a job well done in seeing this bill through the legislature. It is just another step forward as we improve access to high-speed internet sooner rather than later.”

Sen. Scofield

Media reports claimed the new bill would help “thousands” of Alabama’s unconnected to get access to broadband service for the first time. A closer look at the legislation shows an effort to encourage private internet providers in the state to expand their networks in areas they currently consider unprofitable to serve.

At the heart of the new law is up to $20 million in state tax credits for providers willing to expand broadband:

1. A state income tax credit equal to 10% of the new investment a provider spends to build or upgrade broadband service in a qualified unserved area.
2. A 10-year exemption from sales tax for any qualified broadband network facilities that are built with new investment, starting the date those upgrades go live.
3. A sales tax exemption applicable to the purchase of equipment needed for the upgrade.

Rep. Chesteen

There are annual caps on the credits, limiting the amount Alabama is willing to spend on the program:

1. $750,000 limit per provider if the upgrade provides up to 10/1 Mbps service;
2. $1,400,000 limit per provider if the upgrade delivers up to 25/3 Mbps service.
3. $20 million annual cap on program – $18 million designated for rural projects, $2 million for areas that do not receive at least 10/1 Mbps service.

In contrast, New York State’s rural broadband expansion effort paid $209.7 million in the third round of its funding program alone to extend service to an additional 122,285 rural homes, businesses and community institutions. Fairpoint Communications (today doing business as Consolidated Communications) received $3.2 million — more than twice the maximum amount Alabama will pay any one provider — to extend service to just 407 homes in the Capital and mid-Hudson region of the state.

Alabama is also counting on the Trump Administration’s infrastructure improvement spending program that will enable applicants to finance a project by combining loans and grants to provide broadband to eligible rural and tribal areas. But almost all that money will be spent on private providers, and will cover only a small portion of their costs. For a broadband expansion program to be successful, providers will have to determine if the amount of tax credits and exemptions available will allow such projects to pass the critical Return On Investment (ROI) test companies use to decide where to offer service.

Charter Communications is raising rates for its dwindling number of Earthlink customers still subscribed to Earthlink’s legacy internet plans in an effort to avoid Spectrum’s entry-level $65 internet service.

Charter has started to notify customers grandfathered on an Earthlink plan that they are going to be gradually stepping rates up, starting with a $5 increase. Stop the Cap! reader Christopher Rzatkiewicz shared a copy of the bad news on his recent Spectrum bill.

Charter Communications terminated its agreement allowing Earthlink to sell its service over its cable broadband network after completing its merger deal with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. That left an undetermined number of Earthlink customers paying $41.95 a month for Standard Earthlink 15/1 Mbps service, considerably cheaper than Time Warner Cable’s identical, $59.99 15/1 Mbps plan.

This last loophole allowed some customers to avoid switching to Spectrum’s more costly $65 entry-level 100/10 Mbps plan (200 Mbps in select areas). But now Spectrum is gradually taking away Earthlink’s price advantage. The new rate is $46.95 a month, and is likely to continue increasing in similar increments at least twice a year, until its price reaches about $60.

To help convince customers still holding on to older service plans to switch to Spectrum plans and pricing, Charter will continue raising rates on older legacy plans from Time Warner Cable, Bright House, and Earthlink to remove any price advantages those plans may have originally had. That will allow Charter to eventually claim its plans are always cheaper and better.

Charter Communications/Spectrum Standard Broadband Plans

• $46.95 Earthlink Standard¹ (15/1 Mbps)
• $59.99 Time Warner Cable Standard² (15/1 Mbps)
• $44.99 Spectrum Standard New Customer 1-Year Promotion³ (100/10 Mbps⁴)
• $65 Spectrum Standard for Existing Customers (100/10 Mbps⁴)

¹ Earthlink service is no longer available to Charter/Spectrum customers. If you cancel your grandfathered Earthlink plan, you cannot return to this plan in the future.
² Time Warner Cable internet service is grandfathered and no longer available to new customers. If you switch to a Spectrum plan, you cannot return to a Time Warner Cable plan.
³ To qualify as a new customer, either cancel service in your name and enroll as a new customer under another household member’s name or cancel existing service and wait 30 days to re-qualify as a new customer.
⁴ This plan offers 200 Mbps download speed in select areas.