Telecom Law for Local Governments: A Practical Overview of Today’s Key Issues

This session provides a high-level overview of various telecommunications issues encountered by local governments, serving as an introductory survey of the landscape for municipal practitioners. Some of the major topics for this session will include:

• ISM Band proceeding
  • The FCC is considering a Petition for Rulemaking filed by NextNav to reconfigure the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (“ISM”) band, which is heavily used for metering, polling, and RFID devices. Speakers will discuss the proceeding and industry reactions.
• NEPA/NHPA
  • The FCC’s implementation of NEPA and the NHPA creates compliance obligations for many involved in the construction of communications infrastructure. Speakers will discuss the implementation of the statutes, the FCC’s current rulemaking proceeding that seeks to pare the regulations back, and compliance best practices.
• 911/NG911 transition and compliance issues
  • We will provide an update on several active FCC rulemaking proceedings that govern the reliability of the nation’s 911 system, providing 911 call centers with accurate location information of a caller, and requiring 911 providers to report 911 outage information.
• Anterix Rebanding and pLTE
  • A brief history of the FCC’s realignment of the 900 MHz band (and Anterix’s progress clearing the band and leasing and selling broadband licenses), as well as an update on the FCC’s recent expansion from a 3/3 MHz broadband segment to a 5/5 MHz segment.
    Speakers will also discuss private LTE network options in various bands, including T-Mobile, 450 MHz, and 1.4 GHz.
• ROW/Franchising
  • An update on the status of federal efforts to remove perceived barriers to broadband deployments by imposing limits on state and local right-of-way and franchising authority.
• Pole Attachments
  • A brief overview of federal pole attachment regulation and information on pending Congressional and FCC efforts to impose regulations on governing access to municipally-owned poles, ducts, and conduits.
• Small Cells
  • A brief overview of federal limitations on local regulation of small cell and wireless permitting, including pending Congressional and FCC efforts to expand upon the FCC’s 2018 Small Cell Order.
• Municipal broadband/public private broadband partnerships
  • A brief discussion of the key legal issues related to municipal broadband and public private partnerships.

Speaker: Wes Wright, Sean Stokes & Tim Doughty