mobilitie

Mobilitie, Sprint whacked with fines for ignoring environmental, historic rules

11 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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Mobilitie’s fast and loose way of building out cellular networks has earned it and its major customer, Sprint, fines and a reprimand from the Federal Communications Commission. In a consent decree – a negotiated settlement – Mobilitie agreed to pay a $1.6 million fine and Sprint agreed to a $10 million fine for ignoring federal environmental and historic review regulations when building new towers.

The FCC’s documents don’t detail where and when the two companies sinned, but the violations were deliberate, as Mobilitie’s consent decree makes clear…

In an effort to meet certain deadlines, Mobilitie had commenced construction of certain wireless facilities without securing all necessary regulatory and environmental approvals required under the Commission’s Wireless Infrastructure Rules.

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Local agencies get more time to ponder FCC's wireless weed whacker

17 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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There’s more time to chime in on whether the Federal Communications Commission should consider further preemption of local authority over cell sites and other wireless facilities. Last month, the FCC moved forward on a request to do so made by Mobilitie, a wireless infrastructure company that has pushed the boundaries of ethics, if not legality, and the English language in its aggressive pursuit of permission to, among other things, plant towers in public right of ways.… More

FCC waves a wireless weed whacker at local governments

27 December 2016 by Steve Blum
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Honorable mayor and members of the city council…

A bright – or at least brighter – line is likely to be drawn around the discretion local government have to grant permission, or not, to install small cell sites. At the urging of Mobilitie, an aggressive and disingenuous mobile infrastructure company, the Federal Communications Commission is taking a harder look at local and state restrictions on wireless facilities. It’s asking for public comments on whether it should invoke its status as an “expert agency” to cut through conflicting federal court rulings and issue a single set of rules that determine and preempt local government permit review processes regarding wireless sites….… More

Pushback grows on Sprint's pushy cell tower campaign

29 October 2016 by Steve Blum
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Hey guys, cities aren’t dumb.

Mobilitie’s attempt to skate past local permit requirements in its nationwide effort to install 70,000 new wireless sites for Sprint appears to be coming up short. The strategy appears to be to file a truckload of applications for 120-foot cellular towers but label them as utility poles and hope no one notices. As far as I can tell, 120 feet is just the maximum size they’re contemplating, so that’s what they apply to build.… More

Sprint relying on word games to reengineer its cellular network

15 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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Click for the big, ugly picture.

Mobilitie, a mobile telecoms infrastructure company, was hired by Sprint to install 70,000 new wireless sites as it tries to revamp its network and business. Fair enough. But then Mobilitie got cute when it started filing the necessary permit applications.

First, it adopted legal aliases – California Utility Pole Authority and California Transmission Network, LLC, for example – that have a vaguely official ring to them, and seem confusingly similar to the names of legitimate joint utility pole authority groups and electricity transmission organisations.… More