Page 14 - July-Aug2020 Vol38 No2

STATEWIDE
5G Installations Underway Across
the State: Can You Hear Me Now?
You probably can’t watch your favorite
show on television without seeing
a commercial touting a telephone
company’s 5G network. Some of the
statements you’ve heard: “We have the
most complete 5G coverage in the nation;”
“Our 5G network covers more people and
places than anyone else;” and “Even our
4G beats their 5G.”
And let’s not forget everyone’s favorite:
“Can you hear me now?” That guy
changes carriers more than we do. anything else needed to get the necessary
For telecommunications carriers,
5G and small cell installation is serious
business. Touting 5G superiority is not
just something they like to talk about in
advertising campaigns. The various
carriers – led by AT&T and Verizon
– are engaged in aggressive competition
to be the first to install their 5G and small
cells throughout Tennessee. It’s coming
soon to a town near you.
Installation Already Underway: Memphis,
Nashville, Knoxville
In fact, installation is already
underway in Memphis, Nashville
and Knoxville, among others. Local
municipalities have limited flexibility
in accommodating the 5G carriers. By
state law, they generally have the right to
put their 5G and small cell equipment in
your municipality. Can you hear us now? right-of-way (ROW) are the only existing
If you’re wondering why we even
need 5G in the first place, think about
it as you develop CADD drawings on
your laptop while your kid is streaming
an Avengers movie, your spouse is flipping
through Facebook and commenting on
every post, and your other kid is looking
at something else online. It takes lots of
data to support all these habits, not to
mention conducting online business, like
ordering hand sanitizer on Amazon.
The amount of data that moves in
any given second probably is triple the
national debt. The sheer numbers are hard
to comprehend by anyone other than a
hardcore computer geek. Suffice to say,
5G delivers higher capacity for mobile
broadband services, among other things.
But our focus is not to explain what,
14 TPW July/August 2020
by Wain Gaskins & Tish Spalding
exactly, 5G is. Instead, we will focus on Investment, Deployment and Safety Act
the impacts to Tennessee cities where 5G of 2018,” the legislature placed restrictive
is being installed, as well as the impacts on limits on the local municipalities’ abilities
those cities’ public works and engineering to control the implementation of small
officials. cell installations. An excellent summary
of the Act was published by the TML and
For context, what most people are the University of Tennessee Municipal
used to seeing when driving around are Technical Advisory Service.
the tall towers with several antennas at
the top. Depending on the location or In summary, the Act limits the
municipality, there are attempts to make amount of “development fees”
these towers look like trees, flagpoles, and related to the small cell installations.
It imposes limitations, referred to as the
governmental and/or neighbor approvals. “shot clock,” dictating the amount of
time allowed for review and approval of
With the onslaught of 5G, those towers submitted sites. Depending on the amount
won’t necessarily go away, but they will of small cell applications submitted, the
be supplemented by a network of small shot clock timeline can vary from as little
cell installations that could number in the as 60 days to up to 90 days.
hundreds of thousands statewide. Regulating High Volumes of Small Cell
Applications
The intent of the small cell installations
is to provide data transfers, such as If the TCs need to submit high volumes
text messages or phone calls, within of small cell applications, then the Act
a very limited area and then work in allows for the TCs to pay a surcharge to a
conjunction with the big towers to move municipality to maintain the same review
that data at speeds that will accommodate time period. If this surcharge is not paid
the demand. Due to the size of the within a timely period, then the shot clock
small cell equipment and limited area can expand up to 120 days.
coverage, small cells need to be placed
in grid patterns of as little as 500 feet in The Act allows for the TCs to locate
heavily urbanized areas, like downtown small cells on municipality-owned poles
Nashville or Memphis. The city-owned (streetlights, traffic signals, telephone,
and/or utility-owned poles in the streets’ etc.). It also allows for the installation of
new poles in areas where locating small
infrastructure that can support that level cells on an existing pole is not feasible.
of network.
Aggressive Installation, Limited Flexibility From the local perspective, the Act
limits control over facilities within the
Local municipalities have only street ROW, limits the ability to control
limited flexibility in working with the the aesthetics within the community, and
telecommunication carriers (TCs) limits taxpayer compensation for use
on the implementation of small cell of public facilities. While the TCs aren’t
nodes. The TCs have launched an completely insensitive to neighborhood
aggressive campaign to implement concerns regarding small cell installations,
small cell networks across Tennessee. some do work with locals on pole types
The various TCs are competing to and other factors.
get their systems implemented first,
beginning in more urbanized areas. However, some citizens equate the
attempts to address the aesthetics to
To that end, instead of dealing with up “putting lipstick on a pig.” These are
to 345 cities and 95 counties – with their the no-win situations for the local
different design guidelines and other officials who are on the front lines
regulatory restrictions – the TCs went working with the TCs (following the
directly to the state legislature. By passing legislative act.)
the “Competitive Wireless Broadband
Some cities in Tennessee have been