Your Small Cell Agreements Attorney
Carriers want access to your poles and streets. The agreements governing that access define your rights for decades.
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Small Cell Agreements for Public Rights-of-Way
The deployment of small cell wireless facilities in the public right-of-way, including the need for small cell agreements, is one of the most legally complex and politically sensitive challenges facing local governments today. Carriers are aggressively seeking to attach equipment to streetlights, utility poles, traffic signal poles, and other municipally-owned infrastructure throughout neighborhoods, often in proposed quantities and at a pace that outstrips local planning capacity.
Coastal Tower Law helps cities and counties manage their public rights-of-way through legally sound pole attachment and license agreements that comply with state and federal law.
The Legal Framework
The FCC’s 2018 Small Cell Order and subsequent litigation established that certain telecommunications entities have a right to attach to municipally-owned vertical infrastructure in the public rights of way, and set safe harbor for the fees local governments may charge for attaching small wireless facilities to city-owned poles and streetlights. The FCC’s rate of $270 per year for attachment to an existing structure is presumed compliant with the FCC’s cost-based fee standard. Carriers routinely cite this safe harbor not as a floor but as a ceiling, using it to resist any fee structure that exceeds those figures even where a municipality’s actual costs may justify a higher amount. Local governments that want to charge above the safe harbor must take steps before setting such fees so the fees are defensible under applicable law.
What We Help Local Governments Accomplish
- Drafting and negotiating pole attachment agreements and master license agreements governing small cell attachments to city-owned streetlights, utility poles, traffic signal poles, and other municipally-owned infrastructure in the public rights-of-way
- Establishing fee structures that comply with FCC limitations while recovering the municipality’s actual costs
- Negotiating with carriers over disputed interpretations of federal preemption
- Ensuring that only properly qualified telecommunications companies receive access and regulatory rates
The right-of-way is a public asset. The terms under which carriers are permitted to use it should reflect the community’s interests, not just the carrier’s deployment schedule.
Contact Coastal Tower Law to evaluate your existing pole license agreement or to develop a new approach to small cell agreements in your community.