Cities Lose Lawsuit Against FCC's 5G Rules (axios.com) 89
A federal appeals court upheld the Federal Communications Commission's rules that limit municipalities' ability to negotiate with telecom companies such as AT&T and Verizon that are seeking to deploy thousands of 5G antennas on city streets and neighborhoods. From a report: The ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is a blow to dozens of cities that sued the agency, claiming the FCC's 2018 rules takes away their leverage and autonomy in deciding how the telecom industry can install "small-cell" antennas to build 5G networks. The FCC maintains that its rules -- which prohibit excessive fees and permitting delays by municipal governments -- will speed up the deployment of 5G networks throughout the country by removing burdensome barriers to telecom providers. "The wind is at our backs: With the FCC's infrastructure policies now ratified by the court, along with pathbreaking spectrum auctions concluded, ongoing and to come, America is well-positioned to extend its global lead in 5G and American consumers will benefit from the next generation of wireless technologies and services," said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in a statement.
Feds exercising eminent domain for telecoms (Score:2, Interesting)
That's not cool, is it?
Kind of a "taking of property" type thing?
Will Biden be able to undo this?
The cities are claiming the right to be unreasonab (Score:5, Interesting)
To be fair, the cities are arguing that they should be allowed to be unreasonable.
Federal law says that municipalities can no longer ban the deployment of wireless or have "unreasonable" permitting requirements for new services in order to maintain their old monopoly kick-back deals. Those deals themselves were made unlawful per se several years before, so city council members instead just said that any new competitors had to pay $outrageous_fee in order to be allowed to compete with the company that eas contributing to their re-election. That, and requiring a separate application for each telephone pole they want to attachbto, then just ignoring applications.
The FCC implemented the law by defining "unreasonable" more specifically. For example, a city council must approve or deny an application to attach to a pole within 60 days. The cities were arguing that, despite federal law, they should be allowed to just ignore applications for years if they wanted to, not approving or denying, therefore preserving the monopoly for the campaign contributor.
Sixty days seemed reasonable to me for a city to deny or approve using a particular telephone pole. They can still deny it two or three times, having the carrier make changes to the application, so they can drag it out for six months or whatever.
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Heh, yeah, I can see where sometimes you have to call in the cavalry.
It's just that question always comes up, especially with this administration, Cui bono?
Cui bono (Score:3, Informative)
Who profits are the cellular-service providers seeking to get richer by pleasing willing customers with better services.
Who loses are the kickback-seeking local politicians... They've done it to Internet-providers [wired.com], they want to keep doing it.
And whoever Biden's handlers appoint to FCC will let them too.
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Who profits are the cellular-service providers seeking to get richer by pleasing willing customers with better services.
:-) You are such as idealist!
They seek to get richer by lobbying for laws to squash the competition. That's why so many areas only have one company with shitty terms to serve them all.
Re:Cui bono (Score:4, Informative)
No one likes competition, and an entrenched business will use their connections in local government to keep newcomers out, yes. The FCC's actions being discussed are aimed against this practice.
I cited an article explaining, why Internet-service is lacking in so many places. A long and well-researched article. You're citing nothing, while making bombastic claims...
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There is a real numbers risk that everyone is ignoring and all indications are it is having an impact. What is the impact of all those radiation sources on various avian species who get to close to the towers with their load of infectious agents. What kind of does do those microbes get, how will it alter their DNA, how will it change the nature of how much damage they cause and what kind of critters they can infect including us.
Want to blame Wuhan for a virus that came from bats, remeber this, Wuhan was on
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Unreasonable is also subjective.
If that 5G tower kills the local 4G service or interferes with other services, especially public ones, or even just is an eyesore.
Re:The cities are claiming the right to be unreaso (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not the issue in the case. The issue is the cities want to he able to just ignore applications forever, charge $10,000 / pole, whatever, in definance of federal law.
If a city denies it, saying "it will interfere with..." that doesn't violate this law and the regulation that executes it. The regulation says they have to act on applications to upgrade a 4G box to 5G within 60 days - approve or deny. Also, if they deny, they have to give a reason.
The cities are arguing they should be allowed to ignore the applications and just got out drinking with whichever phone company contributes the most to their campaign.
Because as you said "reasonable" is subject to interpretation, the FCC has done their job and translated that to objective standards for particular items. For example, for upgrading a 4G pole-mounted unit to 5G, a "reasonable" time to approve or deny the application is 70 days. The cities a aren't arguing that 60 days isn't reasonable, they are arguing that they don't need to be reasonable.
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A long time ago, in another country the town that I lived in buried all its power and phone cables.
The poles that were left were LIGHTING poles and weren't engineered to take weight of cables or anciliary equipment.
Amongst other benefits, DUI car vs pole didn't knock out power and phone service to neighbourhoods late in the evening (which was a despressingly common situation back then)
30 years later, along came a cable TV company and sued the city to to be allowed to string their cables along the LIGHTING p
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I hear what you're saying.
Also, a 5G DAS is basically a WiFi access point with clock doubler on the RF chip. You've probably heard 5G is good to about 300 meters. Which also happens to be the outdoor range of 802.11n wifi.
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Btw, just my opinion here:
Personally I think "we need 90 days per pole" would have been a better argument than "screw you, we're not going to be reasonable".
They might actually end up winning the case, but on its face their argument appears to suck.
Re:Feds exercising eminent domain for telecoms (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not cool, is it?
Kind of a "taking of property" type thing?
Will Biden be able to undo this?
Not really.
Some cities and towns are notorious for dragging their feet on telecom applications for wireless antennas.
Walnut Creek, CA, the supposed home of Slashdot, is one of those notorious cities that has dragged it's feet for years regarding improved cellular wireless antennas for it's community. The citizens want better and faster service yet the city claims, "We gotta keep the city looking the same. Those antennas, no matter how nicely they are painted or blended into building facades, stand out and detract from the architectural prettiness of of leftist enclave."
How do I know? I know from having worked for one of those companies that had to deal with the pettiness of Walnut Creek elected officials. And those same petty officials had the unmitigated gaul to whine about the sorry state of cellular wireless service in their city at the same time.
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Cities ban towers, then charge 4x the rate to "let" cell phone companies use their police towers. "Uglu antennae" is sophistry, a meme cover story for the corruption.
You can build giant antennae that look like trees, if that is the concern, which it isn't.
Re:Feds exercising eminent domain for telecoms (Score:4, Funny)
those same petty officials had the unmitigated gaul to whine about the sorry state of cellular wireless service in their city at the same time.
To be fair, even the Romans had a tough time mitigating the Gauls.
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That's not cool, is it?
Kind of a "taking of property" type thing?
How is prohibiting excessive fees and unnecessary delaying tactics taking away anybody's property?
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Maybe the locals feel otherwise. It is their town.
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But I don't wanna catch the flu! /s
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The test should be to ensure that not only are there caps on the fees (to stop charging $1M per pole) but also that ALL PLAYERS get charged the same fees anmd face the same delays
this tends to force any sweetheart deals with the incumbents out into the open - along with any backroom off the book dealings that may have taken place
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1. Any administration can undo what a previous one does, excepting for signing laws, for example. Who is fighting to stop that tooth and nail, right now?
2. It might violate emminent domain, but Democrats have zero problem with that, and often fight for it. The Kelo decision was their fat, happy baby. They rely on it to increase tax revenue, which is their most important goal. Seriously. That's why they choose it rather than the poor whose homes are seized for some rich, private guy's casino.
3. Congress
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:-) It was a rhetorical question. I only expect for Biden to be "not Trump", which also might be expecting to much, maybe as long as he doesn't look like Trump, that should be good enough
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After all Trump is trying to get our kids OUT of Afghanistan
Oh jeeze! I hope you really don't believe that shit, and maybe you should count the people falling dead right here. It's not that difficult really. Just a little over one every minute. Maybe you would think more about them if they all died in plane wrecks every two hours, better than dying in the Middle East, right?
Defending Trump... very sad. I'll assume you forgot the sarcasm tag :-)
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*sigh* Just stop. 50 years of that bullshit is enough
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Truly the mark of a great argument, to dismiss your opponent as non-sentient. Well done, sir.
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Republicans believe that local control is paramount in all things...
As long as the people doing the controlling are other Republicans doing it the way they agree with.
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I don't think Biden would undo this.
As a nation we have invested interest in improving our 5G infrastructure. And many of the municipalities are really shooting themselves in the foot with their resistance.
However I feel under Biden and a less Evil FCC. They will probably do proper leadership and listen to the issue that 5G can cause the communities, and see what type of things they can accommodate to lessen the effect.
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That's not cool, is it?
Kind of a "taking of property" type thing?
Will Biden be able to undo this?
This will be easily undone, yes.
The takings is the problem; of course they can decide to not let cities negotiate contracts or terms. But that isn't the same as letting the companies install the stuff; in many cases it will mean instead that the companies are unable to get permission to install the stuff, because the FCC didn't seize and pay for the utility poles and so they can't allow access.
The 10th Amendment prevents the FCC's authority over interstate communications from bleeding over into property acc
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I'm not disagreeing with the need for federal oversight, but this seems to move the corruption from the locals to the FCC, which is usually run by telecom execs.
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That shit doesn't matter anymore. It's a given we elect corrupt politicians. But whose face do you want to see on the television? I prefer something a little less embarrassing.
Based on the current telco performance..... (Score:1, Offtopic)
America's consumers should bend over, assume the position and get their lube ready.
They gonna get fucked again.
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The population will soon be dropping like bees while the rest of the world laughs at them.
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What do you mean "soon"? They have been dropping like flies for months and the rest of the world has been laughing at them for years.
Can you say "regulatory capture"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazing how fast the FCC can move for incumbents like Verizon and AT&T when they say jump.
And how slowly for any competition like Google Fiber, who the incumbents fought against granting utility pole access until Google gave up.
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Re: They desperately need it for incoming USD cras (Score:4)
The thing is, I have no doubt regarding the evilness or even organization of evil you are implying.
But "scanning brain patterns"...Explain, as a proper techie or physicist, how that would/could even work. I mean field strength wise and radial resolution wise.
Please don't poison the general kernel of truth with silly shit the discrediting department of the NSA might as well have made up to kill any opposition... That's how they actually keep the Amwrican population controlled. /feed/?
What use is scanning brains, if they already know what's in there, because they trivially have programmed it in, via the information
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You have patent application in the first link, along with explanations.
Base of the early patent ( from 1978?) was to use two RF carriers ( back then used 100MHz and 110MHz IIRC) and scan for ther reflection off the brain tissue.
IIRC they do mix inside semiconducting cellular tissues and neuron activities are imprinted in that signal.
Moder tech has brought giant advances to that. Modern radio doesn't need to emit just tow carriers but can use complex spectral profiles and analisys can be done much more preci
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You build it, and you demonstrate it. Otherwise it is just opinion, or even fantasy.
And I am fed up with opinion, especially from people who write such drivel that they prove to the world that they do not understand anything about physics, chemistry, biology, and applied sciences...
Re: They desperately need it for incoming USD cras (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, patents don't tell you that something works, only how it works. But it's a common misconception, people hear patent and think "oh, then it MUST be real because it's patented". Charlatans through the ages have worked with the term "patented" to create an air of credibility for their bullshit. In the early days, that was mostly in the medical field, so common actually that patent medicine [wikipedia.org] became the term for snakeoil, today you find patents being thrown about as a credibility surrogate more in the areas of "free energy" scams.
To get a patent, you don't have to show that whatever you're patents does what it is supposed to do. All you have to do is present its inner workings. That's why things like the E-Meter could actually be patented (US Patent 3,290,589).
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Iirc the patent office took the unusual step a few decades ago of requiring a working example for perpetual motion machine patents.
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True, that put a lid on that insanity. Sadly, it did not become a general requirement.
On the other hand, requiring something like that would in turn mean that only people and organizations wealthy enough to actually produce a working prototype could dream of patenting something anymore.
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Rachel Meadow: Bizzarre Cuba story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Havana Incident:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
There are plenty more around.
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Loading some more conspiracy crap on? Because this has fuck all to do with anything discussed in this subthread.
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Wow, reddit AND a subreddit called "conspiracy". Now if there's ever been something that screams credibility, it sure was this!
prohibit excessiv fees and delays.. (Score:1, Troll)
Right. In neo-libertarian America, only private openly de-facto anti-democatic hostile corporations are allowed to do that.
But not the very institutions of democracy that represent the people. (Or at least are supposed to represent them, but often are merely a skin, worn by the above. Which explains the popularity of disliking of said institutions by the very people it should represent.)
Dear America... how did this get so fucked-up?
Re:prohibit excessiv fees and delays.. (Score:5, Insightful)
But whether altruistic or a money grab, what this is really about is power. If the local government allows multiple cable companies to compete, they gain very little power. The companies can do pretty much what they want. But if they award a monopoly to a single company, that company is beholden to them. They gain power over that company and can make demands of it. And because that company is the sole provider of cable TV or Internet or whatever, by proxy they gain power over the people.
That's why in 50 years it hasn't been fixed. The companies are not the problem. They're the symptom. Treating the symptom doesn't fix anything. People get upset at the company with the (government-granted) monopoly, and the government feigns righteous indignation. The company gets booted out (usually bought by a different company), the monopoly gets transferred to the new company, and the cozy arrangement between the government and their pet monopoly continues. Nothing changes.
The problem is corrupt government. Net Neutrality? If your city really wanted to prevent their monopoly ISP from throttling Netflix, the solution is simple. All they have to do was break up the monopoly.The only reason ISPs try to throttle Netflix is because they know they have a monopoly, so their customers can't flee no matter how much they screw them. Allow a second ISP to compete. The moment word got out that one ISP was throttling Netflix, all their customers would cancel service and switch to the other ISP. So no ISP in their right mind would try to throttle Netflix or any other website. No need for national legislation or action by the FCC. Net neutrality was the government's attempt to have their cake and to eat it too. They could point to it as evidence that they were "doing something" about the big bad ISPs, all the while preserving the monopoly which allowed the ISP to throttle in the first place.
You want things to get better? You need to fix the problem, not treat the symptoms. And the problem here is the government, not the telecom companies. (Note that I'm not saying the government is always wrong. But neither is the government always right. In this particular case it happens to be the government which is causing the problem.) The government needs to stop trying to gain control over telecom companies by awarding them a monopoly, and allow multiple ISPs to compete. Or they need to set it up like a utility - a monopoly is awarded to a company which lays down the cable. But that company is prohibited from providing the service which flows over that cable. Multiple companies are then allowed to provide service over that one cable, competing with each other.
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I like the analogy that corporations are basically paperclip optimisers. It's not that they're evil or out to hurt you, they just don't care.
When the paperclip optimiser destroys your life, you shouldn't get angry at the rampaging killbot, because it only does what it was made to do. You SHOULD be getting angry at the person who programmed the killbot. That person, with ethics and morals, saw the killbot drive towards your house, tear it down and turn it into paperclips, while taking bribes fr
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It's not "ebil gumment" vs "noble business". The government is not forcing the cable monopolies to charge outrageous fees to carry free over the air broadcast TV on their 200+ channels.
And it's not just the communication cartel. In Canada insulin that costs $30 costs over $300 in the US. That is de facto blackmail; people's lives are held hostage for corporate profit.
Epipen, just for another example
You're a libertard. You
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Government forcing drug prices lower would have the same effect as forcing iPhone or video game prices lower.
Slower deveopment of the new gee whiz stuff, which, in the case of medicine, is improved lifespans and quality of life.
I don't know what the solution to making everyone have insurance without crushing that is, but it's clear most solutions don't either.
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The rate of invention of drug companies correlates with whether they sell into markets like the US. You're welcome, Canada defender.
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I chose the insulin/Canada example because I know someone working in Canada right now who is paying much, much less for his diabetic meds then he was in the US. That would be factual information, something you have no experience with
And you ignored the Epipen fiasco, which is a 100% red-white-and-blue USA case of corrupt and malevolent corporate greed.
The US spends more money per person the
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Yes, but the federal government needs to stop approving mergers that reduce competition. Breaking up companies after they have gotten too big is painful for everyone, it is better to nip it in the bud. Even natural monopolies are bad.
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It got this screwed up because like you, people keep trying to blame the problem on corporations. Corporations aren't what screwed the pooch here. The government did.
This is nonsense. Corporations and governments worked hand in hand to fuck that dog. It's corporate money's influence on politics that brought us to this pass. Sure, you can say that government should have prevented it, and I do say that. But equally, the ability to do a thing is never itself justification to do it, and the corporations[' officers] applied the money willfully and lavishly.
Corporations simply should not exist at all. All businesses should be worker-owned co-ops. Co-ops of co-ops can do all t
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Maybe...do both?
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"There's a reason why, when the Feds forbid exclusive cable franchises, there wasn't some massive increase in the number of telecommunications companies in each area. Indeed, in most places the competition dropped."
The reason has a lot more to do with PUCs than cities in that instance
The entire comms paradigm is about to be turned on its head in any case - high speed broadband to satellites only 200 miles up means latencies are negligible
In fact thanks to the speed of light in a transmission line being 1/3-
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"The government needs to stop trying to gain control over telecom companies by awarding them a monopoly, and allow multiple ISPs to compete. "
An argument about telecom monopolies that fails to even mention that local government-awarded monopolies have not been legal for 24 years is not a good-faith argument.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not magical* but it does *exist* and you just can't discuss the regulatory environment without referring to it.
*: A significant non-magical property is that former m
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There is less competition in the US domestic telecommunication market NOW than there was just before AT&T was broken up. All the LECs are gone and AT&T has reassembled itself into 2 companies (west and east of the mississippi) without those pesky universal service obligations.
Monopolies at LOCAL levels may be illegal, but they were and are handed out at state levels thanks to PUCs agreeing to conditions that telcos failed to honour in order to merge or raise rates, then failing to hold those telcos
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"If your city really wanted to prevent their monopoly ISP from throttling Netflix, the solution is simple. All they have to do was break up the monopoly."
The level of astroturfing opposing Elon Musk's Skylink system that was uncovered as tracing back to american monopoly broadband providers shows how scared those monopolies are of competition (and gives an indication how much they'll pay to keep their monpolies intact)
GIven the level of local government corruption that the US is enduring, breaking the monop
Slashdot: Being pro-democratic = Troll (Score:2)
Great job, Americans. *slow clap*
Public resources for the profit of corporations (Score:1)
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Klepto-plutocracy: Powered by Verizon! (Score:1)
I don’t care. (Score:2)
Because nothing sucks more than relying on Comcast as the only high speed Internet option in my neighborhood. If it can do better price wise and bypass the last couple hundred feet of cable then all that’s fine.
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Why would they protect the companies (Score:1)
I thought the FCC was supposed to protect the consumer and regulate the companies not the other way around
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And when his turn is up, I expect he'll either "return to the mother ship" or get a cushy job as a lobbyist, trying to tell the next round of FCC commissioners how to do their job. Because, hey, he did that job; he would know.
Fees and Permits? (Score:4)
From what I've seen, cellular companies usually install their antennas on existing structures. Often power poles, sometimes buildings. The permits have been issued and the fees paid. In the case of private property (investor owned power companies and privately owned buildings) it's a negotiations between two private entities. For public utilities, they will negotiate a fixed rental per tower or pole throughout the service area, plus pay the cost of any needed upgrades (usually increased height). The structure is already there. No further permits are required.
As far as sticking an antenna on top of something: The FCC fought and won this battle a long time ago against cities, homeowners associations and apartment buildings. They (the HOs) have no power to prevent TV antennas and very little power to prevent ham radio towers (I know. I live just down the street from one).
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5G requires densities so high that you could be looking at nodes every 50-100 metres in dense urban areas and every 200-300 metres in surburbia. That means "existing structures" start becoming awkward to define (usually poles)
What the anti-5G lobby fails to take into account is that by necessity that increasing density requires decreasing power - down from fleapower to gnatpower in a lot of cases. Mobile phones in cities are already routinely emitting less than 10mW during a call (300mW max) and the bases t
They are preparing for USD crash/"Global Reset" (Score:1)
They are reconfiguring society so that whole countries can be run as an open prison, with private "security" firms doing muscle work along with installed IoT nodes and cameras.
5G, along with Wifi etc is needed as invisible net that enables communication with nodes.
5G is especially interesting for advanced two-way radio and wide band, so it can be used for surveillance etc. More or less the same with Wi-Fi6 etc.
https://www.reddit.com/r/consp... [reddit.com]
Their crown jewel is using RF to scan brain patterns of the subje