Local Government Groups Slam Wireless Industry's Infrastructure Complaints
Groups representing local governments filed FCC comments accusing the wireless industry of distorting the record on the real issues that carriers face in wireless siting. Reply comments were due Thursday (docket 25-276) in response to the FCC’s wireless infrastructure NPRM, which commissioners approved in September (see 2511250075). RF safety advocates continued to flood the record with objections as well.
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“As representatives of the level of government closest to the people, local leaders have worked hard to collaborate creatively” with industry “to bring high-speed, affordable broadband, and telecommunications services to all communities,” said the filing from the government groups. Local government authority over placement and aesthetics of wireless facilities “must be preserved.” Wireless industry commenters also “significantly underestimate the costs” that municipalities face “processing wireless applications and inappropriately discount the reasonableness of those fees,” the groups said. The filing was signed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties and the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors.
Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit group concerned about RF safety, has made dozens of filings in the docket in recent weeks. “The record before the Commission is clear: the environmental and human health consequences of wireless infrastructure are neither speculative nor remote, but reasonably foreseeable, well documented in the scientific literature, and already observable in both human populations and ecological systems,” the group said in its reply comments this week.