Industry Faces Heightened Municipal Resistance to Small Cells, Says Crown Castle CEO
HOUSTON -- It’s far tougher for the wireless industry to break through local resistance to small cells than it was for larger towers, Crown Castle CEO Jay Brown said Tuesday. But the business opportunity for deploying small cells equals larger towers, he said in a keynote at the Wireless Industry Association’s HetNet Expo. The wireless industry seeks “predictability and consistency” in regulation so it can quickly upgrade U.S. networks to 5G, WIA CEO Jonathan Adelstein said in an earlier keynote. As part of that effort, his association Tuesday protested a South Dakota proposal to ban wireless equipment from some highways.
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Some in industry believed deploying small cells in communities would be a similar process to spreading towers, but they have “pretty quickly learned it’s a heck of a lot harder to deploy small cells than it is towers,” said Brown. With towers, industry would speak to a specific neighborhood, such as a homeowner’s association, then leverage its approval to convince the city council, he said. For small cells, “the amount of reach both on the political side as well as outreach to a community is significantly greater.”
The executive predicted significant investment by wireless operators in small cells over the next decade. “We think one day the opportunity we have in front of us with small cells could be as big as the tower business we run today, with nearly $3 billion of revenue.” Current levels of capital spending by carriers likely will continue, he said. “There may never be an inflection point … when we see significantly more capex spent by the carriers,” he said: There could be a “decade-plus where we see consistent investment by the carriers to continue to improve the networks.”
Industry is ready to fight barriers to deploying small cells, said Adelstein. “We all are trying to be as respectful as we can with local communities and address their real concerns, but at the same time, we need to push back when they go beyond reason. They don’t need to treat each one of these devices like it’s a macro tower.” WIA is working with states, the FCC and Congress to ease barriers, Adelstein said. “Our members … are putting out billions of dollars in private capital every year and we just ask that we have predictability and consistency so that investment can continue and can flow.”
WIA protested a South Dakota Transportation Commission proposal banning wireless infrastructure from noninterstate highway rights of way. The SDTC proposal “will stymie the deployment of advanced wireless services, stifle competition and access to broadband, and contravene federal law,” WIA wrote in comments in docket 70:04:05:01. Rather than specifically regulate wireless, the state commission “may consider enacting technology-neutral limits on facility size and placement, such as limiting the height of new poles or the volume of equipment to be placed on poles or other structures,” WIA said. The SDTC didn't comment.
“I know all too well how much trouble regulators can cause,” said Adelstein, referencing his background as a former FCC commissioner. “I’ve also learned that with proper education, they can be very, very helpful.” Adelstein is “encouraged” by what he has seen from Washington, despite government gridlock affecting many industries, he said: “We’re still seeing a lot of resistance … but we’re actually seeing them say to us, ‘What can we do to help?’”
To break through resistance, industry must do better showing what wireless enables, Brown said. The good news for industry is that people didn’t always understand the need for towers when cellphones were new, but consumers now rely on wireless networks and generally support upgrades, he said. Towers act much like overhead lighting for illuminating a large area, whereas the small cells are like lamps for enhancing specific locations, Brown said. Towers will remain important for macro coverage, but small cells will offload high demand in busy areas, he said.
Taking advantage of higher frequencies requires “massive densification” of networks and “more and more antennas,” Adelstein said. That’s critical given predictions that data demand could increase sixfold over the next five years, he said. “That figure by the way was before I think we even heard of Pokemon Go.”