CommLawBlog : Broadcast & Communications Lawyers & Attorneys : Fletcher Heald & Hildreth Law Firm : Telecommunications, FCC Regulation, Communications Act

Payroll tax cut extension law gives modest relief to wireless tower industry; Congress to localities: States’ rights? What states’ rights?  

In a little noticed section of the landmark Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act, Congress has thrown the wireless industry – or, more specifically, the folks who build towers for the wireless industry – a small measure of relief in the on-going struggle to get tower modifications approved and constructed. Buried in a collection of odds and ends dumped, seemingly as afterthoughts, at the end of the law, Section 6409 requires state and local governments to approve modifications of wireless towers and base stations as long as those modifications don’t substantially change the dimensions of the existing structures.

The wireless industry has long complained that local authorities hold up approval of new tower construction either out of either misplaced concern for interference issues or simply as a revenue-generating mechanism. That problem has increasingly spread to tower modifications as well.

The streamlining of needed approvals is a big inducement to licensees to collocate on existing structures, saving considerable time and money in getting a station up and operating. Most federal rules properly treat minor modifications of existing structures as non-events that require little or nothing in the way of prior approvals. Local authorities, by contrast, have come to see such collocation applications as an additional opportunity to interpose themselves into the process, usually not to the financial or operational benefit of the carriers.

Congress moved to correct this abuse. In Section 6409 it simply pre-empts states and local authorities from being able to deny eligible facilities requests, i.e., requests involving:

• the collocation of new transmission equipment;
• the removal of transmission equipment; or
• the replacement of transmission equipment.  

Once the President signs the act into law, these seemingly innocuous alterations of existing structures will be safe from state and local meddling.  (The law does leave all applicable environmental rules with respect to such towers in effect.)

At least two questions remain.

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FCC plunges ahead despite pending appeals and reconsideration petitions

The FCC has released a Public Notice announcing proposed ground rules for its planned “reverse auction”  to award $300 million in funding for mobile service to under-served parts of the country.    In a reverse auction, bidders vie to accept the lowest payment from the FCC to provide a slate of designated services by a certain date. The Commission is inviting comments on its proposed approach, but interested parties will have to act fast (as will the Commission): the auction is tentatively scheduled for September 17, 2012, but there is a lot of work to be done before the auction can actually take place. 

No one can say the FCC isn’t moving quickly on this auction – perhaps too quickly. It issued this public notice only a month after the new Mobility Phase I process became effective as part of the watershed USF/ICC reform order adopted last fall. The problem is that petitions for reconsideration were filed in December challenging the timing and structure of the proposed auction. Until those are resolved, the FCC can hardly proceed too far with the auction.  

At the same time, the source of the funds to be distributed in the auction remains up in the air. Long-time observers of this space will recall that the FCC in 2010 took the unusual step of “re-purposing” some $500 million dollars that has been designated under the USF program for CETCs.   (When Verizon and Sprint agreed to forgo USF payments that would have been due to them over the next five years, the FCC decided to put that money into a rainy day fund for broadband build-out rather than distributing it to the remaining CETCs.) That highly unusual and suspect action remains under review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Depending on the outcome of that case, there may not be any money to hand out. 

Curiously, the FCC failed to alert folks interested in the auction that the auction and the money are both still very much up in the air.

Assuming that the auction proceeds in something like its present form, however, the FCC’s notice sheds some light on what is likely to be in store.

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Less than hard-and-fast 90- and 150-day time limits for state/local actions on wireless tower permit requests affirmed

Cellular tower builders and wireless companies can breathe a sigh of relief: the “shot clock” presumptions imposed by the FCC on local government permitting processes have been upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. As a result, those presumptions – i.e., that state and local officials should ordinarily take no more than 90 days to act on wireless “collocation” applications and 150 days to act on all other wireless siting applications – remain in effect. But in affirming the Commission’s judgment in the face of challenges brought by two Texas communities, the Fifth Circuit acknowledged that local governments may still be able to rebut the presumptions – and, thus, drag out the permitting process – in individual cases.

The issue of local foot-dragging in antenna siting processes got on the Congressional agenda back in the 1990s. Out of concern that local governments might be reluctant to authorize new or modified transmission facilities in their particular bailiwicks (can you spell NIMBY?) and that such reluctance might in turn stymie the spread of wireless services, Congress weighed in. In the 1996 Telecom Act, Congress required that state and local governments act on requests to “place, construct, or modify” wireless facilities “within a reasonable period of time” after the filing of such requests. 

That statutory mandate, however, proved less than effective because – here’s a surprise – tower builders, wireless operators and municipalities tended to differ over what constituted a “reasonable period of time”. Is a year too short? Is ten years too long? In 2008, more than a decade after the 1996 Telecom Act, CTIA-The Wireless Association® asked the Commission to tie down the concept of “reasonableness” a bit tighter than Congress had. 

After soliciting and considering a broad range of comments, the Commission obliged.

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Procedural stumble results in withdrawal of citations and proposed fines

We reported last year on FCC citations against convenience store chains Circle-K and 7-Eleven. We don’t usually think of convenience stores as being subject to FCC regulation. But because the stores stocked prepaid cell-phone handsets, the FCC designated them “resellers of wireless services,” and went on to fault them for failing to file certain reports relating to compatibility of the handsets with hearing aids.

The FCC has now withdrawn those citations along with eight others, plus nine proposed fines.

When the FCC or any federal agency adopts a rule that imposes new paperwork burdens, the hilariously-named Paperwork Reduction Act requires the rule to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) before it can go into effect. The FCC ships the newly-adopted rule over to OMB for review, a process which normally takes just a few weeks. OMB almost always approves the rule, even if it triggers staggering amounts of new paperwork, and gives the rule a “control” number. The FCC then puts a notice in the Federal Register saying the rule is effective.

Unfortunately, this seemingly simple process has been breaking down with increasing frequency.

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A semi-brief overview, from the wireless perspective, of the massive order overhauling the Universal Service Fund and Intercarrier Compensation system

The FCC released its historic 751-page Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the Universal Service Fund (USF) and Intercarrier Compensation on November 18, providing a sumptuous repast for the communications industry to feast on over the Thanksgiving holiday.   It took many readers a few weeks to fully digest the vast smorgasbord of items resolved by the Commission in this one proceeding.   But having pushed ourselves away from the table at last, we can now comment on particulars of the Order that most affect wireless providers.   The Order also very radically affects the rules governing intercarrier compensation and USF for wireline service, but we are reporting on those developments separately out of compassion for our readers.

Definition of Supported Services. The first big step taken by the Commission was to bring broadband within the universe of services supported under the USF umbrella. The FCC chose not to simply define broadband as a supported service, but instead to expand its definition of supported “voice telephony” to include VoIP. At the same time, the FCC is requiring supported voice telephony providers to provide broadband.  

This awkward dance permits the Commission to continue ducking the issue of whether broadband should be re-classified as a “telecom” service regulated under the common carrier regime of the Communications Act or an “information” service regulated only under the FCC’s ancillary jurisdiction. But this dance creates problems of its own.

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“Effective dates” can be hard to pin down,  thanks to contradictions, omissions and an overall lack of clarity by the FCC – take Form 477 as an example

The November 7, 2011 edition of the Federal Register contained what appeared at first blush to be a fairly routine notice that certain rules had received approval from the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) and were therefore going into effect as of the publication of that notice.   But when we lift up that seemingly innocent flat rock of a notice, we observe a swarm of ugly questions about just how and when FCC rules become effective. Because FCC regulations have the force of law and are enforceable by fines in thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars, it is critical that the public know exactly when compliance is required. Yet that seemingly simple detail – when do we have to obey a new rule? – can be hopelessly obscure, as was certainly the case in the proceeding referenced in the November 7 notice.  

That proceeding involved amendments to Form 477, but the same question – i.e., when does a requirement become “effective” – applies to many other FCC proceedings.

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We reported last month that a few of the FCC’s new rules for Wireless Communications Service (WCS) and Satellite Digital Audio Radio Service (SDARS) licensees finally went into effect – a mere 16 months after the FCC had adopted them.   The bizarre delay in getting the rules approved by the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) – which must approve agency rules that impose paperwork burdens on people – has never been explained, as far as we can tell. But, after most of the implicated rules finally made it over to OMB for review last summer, those rules were quickly blessed and went into effect on September 19, 2011. 

It turns out, however, that a handful of these star-crossed rules were omitted from the original packet sent to OMB for approval. So yet another trip to OMB was necessary. The final seven rules were duly approved by OMB on September 26, 2011, and have become effective as of October 31, 2011 through publication in the Federal Register. The rules in question deal with coordination or certification by or between WCS and SDARS licensees and other parties. (For those of you keeping track, those rules are Sections 27.14(p)(7), 27.72(b), 27.72(c), 27.73(a), and 27.73(b), all of which have now become effective, and Sections 25.202(h)(3), 25.214(d)(2), and 27.53(a)(10), which will now be enforced.)

While this situation may have been anomalous – let’s hope so, at least – it is clearly unacceptable for rules, once formally adopted by an administrative agency, to remain in regulatory limbo for a year and a half pending perfunctory review by another government agency. If the rules were worth adopting in the first place, they should be worth putting into effect right away.   Here the notification and coordination requirements established by the rules have not been effective and therefore have not been able to serve their intended purpose for no good reason.

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After one of the most hotly and intensely lobbied proceedings in its history, the FCC has adopted a framework by which to (a) reform and re-purpose the distribution of billions of dollars in Universal Service Fund (USF) money and (b) revise the financial arrangements governing the exchange of traffic between all categories of carriers. The stakes in this game are huge, because the FCC’s action upsets, albeit gradually, a generation of expectations about who receives and who pays for hundreds of billions of dollars in telecommunications services -- and how they pay for it. The sweep of the FCC’s action is so broad that there is something almost every industry player will love and something they will hate just as much.

At this writing, the FCC has not yet issued its magnum opus, a tome likely to reach Moby Dick-like proportions. The FCC’s action included both a Report and Order (R&O) adopting many new rules that will go into effect after publication in the Federal Register, and a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM) seeking comment on some important loose ends left hanging by the Report and Order.   A myriad of the details of the plan will be known only when the full text of the R&O is released; in the meantime, however, the FCC has released a brief Executive Summary outlining the most important provisions of the new regime. These include:

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FCC proceeding placed on hold as wireless industry adopts voluntary measures to reduce bill shock

As we reported a little less than a year ago, the FCC released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposing that wireless carriers be required to take steps to avoid “bill shock”.  Readers with good memories will recall that in the summer of 2010, Congress, the Administration and the FCC were highly exercised about the heartbreak of bill shock. Numerous complaints were rolling in from parents of teenagers and international travelers, among others, who were shocked to discover that they had somehow exceeded their plan limits or incurred international roaming charges which they had not expected. Horror stories of phone bills of $34,000 and $18,000 prompted our trusty regulators to leap into action with a plan to make carriers warn consumers of impending danger before it strikes.

That was then; this is now.

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Sixteen months after adoption, the new rules kick in

In May, 2010, we reported that the FCC had adopted a set of rules designed to promote technical harmony between the Satellite Digital Audio Radio Service (SDARS) operators and their immediately adjacent electromagnetic neighbors, the Wireless Communications Service (WCS) licensees. A few of the new rules involved a paperwork burden and therefore had to go through the often perfunctory gauntlet of being approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The process, mandated by the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), can often be completed in less than four months.

Not this time.

The first step in the PRA process calls for the FCC to solicit comments from the public about the “information collection” aspects of the new rules. That solicitation involves a pro forma notice in the Federal Register. For some reason it took the Commission eight months to get that less-than-one-page notice into the Register. 

The PRA requires a 60-day comment period at that point, a period that wrapped up on March 22. After that, the Commission is supposed to bundle up all the comments it receive, tack on a “supporting statement” explaining everything to OMB, and ship it all over to OMB for its review. In significantly more complicated proceedings we’ve seen the Commission accomplish this hand-off within 24 hours of the close of the 60-day comment period.

Not this time.

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