The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will vote later this month on an order to accelerate wireline and wireless broadband deployment by removing barriers to infrastructure investment. It offers guidelines to states and municipalities on covering costs of site and attachment rentals, processing applications and deployments in the rights-of-way, measures to maintain aesthetic and technical requirements, and shot clocks to ensure timely government responses to deployment requests.
This is a welcome development to meet the exploding demand for data services, to catch up in the 5G race with China, and to stimulate competition between different broadband infrastructures. Twenty states have already enacted bipartisan legislation to speed small cell deployment, Congress introduced the bipartisan STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act, and many cities are on track to deploy 5G technologies for home broadband markets by the end of the year.
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