People want connectivity everywhere. They want to use mobile data applications in almost every setting possible (on the bus, plane, ski slopes, rural countryside, etc). With the exponential growth that customers experience in today’s mature communications market, they expect wireless coverage to be completely ubiquitous, to exist everywhere, and without interruption.
Advertisement slogans like “More Bars in More Places”, the “Now Network” and the induced fear of “Dead Zones” contribute towards strengthening this expectation. But customers are only one element in a wireless communications service provision system. Careful study of this system can lead us to being able to represent the entire system with a single diagram that we will call “the wireless PIT” (Policy Interaction Triangle). Understanding the elements of the PIT and abstracting the interactions between these elements can assist in the design of a formalism that can be extended to the study of other telecommunications systems as well. Like in most other systems, a company that is able to position itself to deal with these interactions between elements is capable of developing a niche area of expertise in the market.
The Elements
The wireless PIT has its three primary elements situated on the vertices –
1. Customers.
2. Municipal land use regulators and local government zoning authorities.
3. Wireless Service Providers.
The customers, the recipients of wireless service are the most important element in the PIT and hence placed on the top of the triangle. Right below the customers are the municipal authorities and the wireless service providers, who are equally important and therefore placed at the same level at the remaining two vertices of the PIT. Each of the three elements interacts with each other in a bi-directional fashion – i.e. there is a transfer of tangible as well as intangible quantities to and from each element and these interactions help in maintaining the equilibrium of the system.
The interaction
Customers<->Municipal authorities Interaction:
The customers in a neighborhood are organized into a community by the municipality. This organization enables the customers to interact with one another and form a strong network within their respective community. The customers in turn elect their officials; pay their taxes etc. to the municipalities, thus completing the bi-directional transfer.
Customers<->Wireless Providers Interaction:
The customers enable the wireless service providers to obtain revenue in return for the provision of service.
Municipal zoning authorities <->Wireless Providers Interaction:
The interaction between wireless providers and municipal land use regulators and zoning authorities is not as straightforward and well defined as their interaction with customers. Wireless service providers require infrastructure in order to provide coverage and connectivity. Infrastructure comprises traditional cell tower designs (freestanding towers) as well non-traditional designs (antennas on building rooftops or on utility poles, in-building wireless systems, femto/micro/pico cells, distributed antenna systems, etc).
In order to mount the infrastructure, the wireless service providers approach the municipal land use regulators and zoning authorities to give them access to places where they can install their antennas or sites where they can build their towers. The municipalities dislike towers because they are large, ugly and visually intrusive structures that can negatively impact neighborhood property values and hence they reject new tower applications. Sometimes, the municipalities worry that there is not enough space on rooftops/utility poles to mount additional antennas and other supporting electronic equipment alongside it and these applications also get rejected. At other times they reject applications on the basis that the community is already happy with their current level of service and are not in need of any new services. The wireless companies want to provide newer services to their already existing customers and expand their coverage to new areas with the hope of gaining customers.
Wireless companies are continuously looking to upgrade their network infrastructure to keep pace with the rapid growth in technologies and innovations. Alternatively, they may be looking to cover a dead zone with connectivity or increase their current mobile data speeds by installing additional equipment. The wireless providers claim that the municipalities take a very long time to make decisions on tower/antenna siting applications, within which time technologies become obsolete thereby thwarting the wireless service provides from providing service to their customers. This negotiation and interaction process between the municipal zoning boards and the wireless companies is complex and not very well defined, leading to a multitude of litigations between them. Additionally, the absence of a standard rule book that defines the amount of time and the manner in which municipalities should respond towards new antenna/tower/communications facilities applications, have led to a non-uniform patchwork of regulations across the nation that increase a wireless company’s time taken to get their service to market. Delving deeper into this interaction would be an excellent topic for a future post.
Finally, there is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The role of the FCC in the PIT is to act as an independent regulatory authority. Their participation is crucial in maintaining the equilibrium of this system. This ensures that every stakeholder performs their role well, and that the interactions between the stakeholders happen smoothly and in a way that enables the development of communications for the society as a whole.
For example, with a view to making the interaction between the municipal zoning authorities and the wireless providers more standardized, the FCC has initiated a rule making procedure, wherein the FCC has defined undefined terms and clarified some other ambiguities, so that interpreting the Telecommunications Act becomes easier for all concerned parties[1]. Understanding the role of the FCC in the communications industry as a whole is also a topic of a future post.
References
[1] In the Matter of Petition for Declaratory Ruling to Clarify Provisions of Section 332(c)(7)(B) to Ensure Timely Siting Review and to Preempt Under Section 253 State and Local Ordinances that Classify All Wireless Siting Proposals as Requiring a Variance, WT Docket No. 08-165, Released: Nov 18. 2009, Available at: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-09-99A1.pdf
[...] towers or alternate cell sites to increase capacity in their networks. In a previous post titled “The Wireless PIT”, I briefly touched upon some of the issues that arise when new tower applications are submitted [...]