I said in this morning’s blog post that the devil will be in the details of the FCC’s draft ruling on small cell rules. It indeed is. The draft released this afternoon limits “fees for the use of government property in the [public right of way], such as light poles, traffic lights, utility poles, and other similar property suitable for hosting Small Wireless Facilities”.
That means that cities and local agencies will not be able to set “market-based charges” for renting out poles and other municipal property to mobile carriers, and would be limited to a maximum annual lease rate of $270.
That’s the quick version. There’s a lot of devil in the FCC’s 100 pages of detail; I’ll dive into it in tomorrow morning’s post.