September 2018

The Federal Communications Commission reduced the role of local communities in the deployment of infrastructure necessary for 5G and other advanced wireless services. This action, which builds upon those already taken by states and localities to streamline deployment, underscores the FCC’s commitment to ensuring that the United States wins the global race to 5G. The first part of the decision, a Declaratory Ruling, focuses primarily on local fees for the authorizations necessary to deploy small wireless facilities. Specifically, the Declaratory Ruling:

The Federal Communications Commission's Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force made a presentation on the first multiple-round, reverse auction to allocate ongoing, high-cost universal service support for fixed broadband service. Yes, that's right -- the first. Each bid was a commitment to offer broadband and voice services in a particular area for an amount of support. The support amount associated with a bid depended on the speed, latency, usage levels of the broadband service. Bids started high and went down. Uh huh -- how low can you go, my carrier?