Lately, I’ve been hearing from people in Keene about how frustrated they are by the ugly new small cell towers being put up in the middle of residential neighborhoods. I’m frustrated too!
I actually raised the alarm about this policy four years ago, when, as a candidate for City Council, I wrote a letter to the Sentinel which ultimately prompted Keene to establish perhaps the first local ordinance in New Hampshire on the issue of small cell installations.
Unfortunately, the ordinance was mostly only able to lay out some aesthetic guidelines and notification procedures, with some very weak location guidelines.
The problem is that Federal Communications Commission (FCC), several years ago, decided to bless the telecommunications industry by opening the doors to allow them to place there equipment in the public right of way with very few restrictions, at very little cost, and with almost nothing that a local government can to restrain them.
If that sounds corrupt, that's because it was. It was the Trump Administration. Although, make no mistake, a Romney Administration or Sununu Administration would have been just as corrupt in this respect. There is nothing Republicans like more than handing public property over to rich companies.
As a result of this policy - which, again, is a classic, orthodox Republican idea, that Republicans have voted for and supported for years - what has happened is that it has become a whole lot more convenient for telecom companies to put up cheap towers in the public right of way, without having to pay any market-based rent for it.
As a Democrat, I believe in the free market, and so I don't understand why these companies are getting this huge and obvious subsidy. They said they needed to do it as part of the "5G rollout", which I guess was so important back in the late 2010s that it justified steamrolling local control, stiffing local taxpayers, and adding tech-blight to our residential neighborhoods.
At the time, telecommunications companies were pushing the idea that these small towers are necessary to support high speed features related to the 5G rollout. I beginning to think that's a snow job.
Because its funny, I don't actually see any 5G rollout around here. It sure looks like all these new small cells are actually being used to support last-generation 4G services.
Sure, with additional equipment, these towers could be used to support 5G but... will they?
When exactly are we going to get the befits this technology promised to deliver? Do we only get the costs?
And if all we were ever really going to get was 4G, was it really necessary to let telecommunications companies build out these new small cells all over people's neighborhoods to get it?
I suspect it was not.