All around the country there are fights going on between pole owners, governments, and wireless carriers over pole attachments and related issues for small cell deployment. Small cells are the first new technology that is mostly interested in non-traditional attachments, but will soon be followed by a proliferation of companies also wanting to hang devices to transmit millimeter wave radios and wireless local loops. The fights cover a wide range of different issues:

Safety. Most current pole rules were created for the purposes of keeping it safe for technicians to work on poles, particularly during bad weather conditions. Some of the devices that carriers now want to hang on poles are not small. Some are the size of dorm refrigerators or even a bit larger. And these devices are connected to live electric wires. Adding such devices to poles can make it significantly harder for a technician trying to restore power during a rain or snow storm. Just maneuvering around such devices can be a major safety concern even in good weather.

New Poles / Taller Poles. There are reports of wireless carriers asking to install new poles as tall as 120 feet in city rights-of-way. For network deployments that include wireless backhaul it’s vital that each small cell or other device has a clear line-of-sight to other devices in the network – and being higher in the air can create the needed wireless network.

In most towns the poles are not taller than 60 feet and often shorter. Taller poles create a whole new set of problems. They might mean a whole new level of tree trimming or even eliminating taller trees – and many communities take great pride in their trees. And these new poles will need power, meaning stringing more wires in the air, which can detract from the aesthetics of a residential neighborhood as well as to create more issues with downed power lines and trees to keep trimmed.

This also raises the issue of the long-term impact of such new poles. Many cities have moved other utilities underground or have multi-year programs to migrate existing utilities underground. These new wireless-only poles also require a power feed, and at least some of them require a fiber feed. Can a carrier require a wireless pole/tower in a neighborhood where everything else is already underground? Can they insist that their poles be left standing during future conversions of neighborhoods to underground utilities?

There is also the issue of sharing such new poles. Cities fear that they will be swamped with requests for new poles from companies wanting to deploy wireless technologies. It’s not hard to picture an NFL city that might have a dozen different companies wanting to deploy wireless devices – and it’s not hard to picture this resulting in chaos and a proliferation of multiple new poles on the same streets as well as numerous new electric lines to connect all of the new devices.

Right to Say No. Cities largely want the right to decide what goes in their rights-of-way. This often has manifested with requirements that anybody that wants access to rights-of-way get some sort of a franchise. It also has meant the development of local ordinances that define the whole process of using rights-of-way from the permitting process through installation techniques. But the carriers are currently lobbying at the state level and at the FCC to make uniform rules to apply everywhere. If the FCC or a state passes blanket rules there are many cities likely to challenge such rules in court.

Fees for Attachments. The carriers are also lobbying heavily to define the fee structure for attachments of these sorts of new connections. Compensation has always been an issue and my guess is that at some point the FCC will step in here in the same manner they did in the past with other pole attachments.

General Irony. I find it ironic that AT&T is leading the battle to get good terms for attaching wireless devices. AT&T has been the primary entity that has been fighting hard against Google to keep them off AT&T poles. And now AT&T wants the right to force their way onto poles owned by others. But in the regulatory world if we have ever learned any lesson it’s that big companies don’t seem to have a problem with arguing both sides of the same argument when it suits their purposes.