San Jose Clearing 10 Small-Cell Permits Weekly and Gaining Speed
San Jose is finding early success speeding up permitting process for small-cell wireless infrastructure that will be used for 5G, city officials said in an interview. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and local governments have touted San Jose’s public-private partnerships with AT&T, Verizon and Mobilitie as a model that could be applied nationally, without pre-emption (see 1806280007). Verizon said its agreement with the city is meeting expectations.
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“This has been a long and winding road,” said Deputy City Manager Kip Harkness. A big hurdle was getting the city to understand the importance of moving quickly, he said. Also critical was building trust between government and industry, he said. The municipality went “from not even really understanding what this technology was going to look like … to really trying to shift how we thought about those light poles and our assets,” Harkness said. The local government shifted gears from a regulator to a facilitator and finally to a driver of the technology, he said.
San Jose’s deals with carriers are “still pretty freshly inked,” with deployment “related primarily” to the city’s initial May agreement with AT&T (see 1805020046), said Harkness. Sixty-six small-cell facilities are in construction and 13 ready for final inspection, said Broadband Manager Josh Guevara. The new facilities initially will provide 4G LTE but later support 5G when carriers are ready, he said. Commissioner Brendan Carr last month claimed zero small cells were deployed there (see 1809270040).
The city has cleared at least 10 permits per week in each of the past five weeks, Guevara said. “Maintaining that cadence is going to get us to 500 permits in a year, just with one carrier.” Including all carriers, the city expects to approve 1,000 permits in 2019, the officials said. It’s up to carriers how fast the buildout happens after permits are approved, said Harkness.
“We’re glad that the Capital of Silicon Valley is almost ready to approve its very first small cell -- two years after carriers sought to deploy there," emailed a Carr spokesperson, referring to the city officials saying the 13 furthest along are still being finalized. "With commonsense policies in place, small cells have already been approved and built in places like Fishers, Indiana, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Pelahatchie, Mississippi, bringing next-gen connectivity." The FCC didn't comment.
A September commission order setting shot clocks and rate ceilings for small-cell deployments (see 1809260029) shouldn’t affect San Jose’s contracts, said Harkness. “We’re hoping to proceed with them along the lines we have negotiated because we’re actually delivering higher speeds and better value” than what the FCC requires, he said. San Jose fees are higher than the FCC ceiling, “but we’re also giving much better service” and “covering our actual costs,” he said.
The locality has 30-40 people working on the small-cell permitting process, including 13 new positions, said Guevara. The city didn’t have a dedicated team last year. An online reservation system is speeding the permitting process, as are weekly meetings that help the team quickly identify issues, he said.
Initial placement of small cells will be in highly congested areas like downtown and in shopping centers, said Harkness. Agreements say deployment will be equitable, “but we also understand that the initial deployment really needs to be guided by the customer pain points.” Small cells are going up on light poles, which have a small, shrouded antenna at the top, two small cells attached to the pole itself lower down, and below that a power box at about 7 feet above the ground. The facilities “blend in” with the poles, he said. The companies each want their own poles, so there won’t be multiple carrier facilities on each structure, he said. The city has enough light poles for that, he said.
There was one hiccup when the city wasn’t sure about a carrier’s suggestion to mount equipment using straps or bands rather than direct drill, Guevara said. The local government worked with the carrier to ensure the design was safe from an engineering perspective, ultimately OK'ing the plan, he said.
Verizon’s agreement with San Jose “has allowed for an accelerated and more efficient permitting process,” said a company spokesperson, describing its build as “ongoing.” An AT&T spokesperson referred us to a Sept. 10 news release saying it's bringing 5G to parts of San Jose and several other cities in early 2019. Mobilitie didn’t comment.
San Jose plans to write a “playbook” for improving local processes for small-cell deployments, with a draft possibly ready in the first half of 2019, Harkness said. “A lot of the lessons do carry over” to smaller municipalities that may not have the same resources, he said. The online reservation system could be adapted easily, for example, he said. Smaller towns may be able to pool resources by working regional groups, he said. “The key piece is you have to have people in before [deployment] starts, thinking and working on this.”
This experience shows "local governments and providers find solutions that work when given the opportunity," NATOA General Counsel Nancy Werner emailed. "It’s unfortunate that the FCC’s recent actions are likely to upend these existing agreements and inject a lot of uncertainty into the deployment process."