To: Listserver From: Bill Talanian Subject: County Telecommunications Ordinance
As might be expected Santa Barbara County's Telecommunications Ordinance is gaining national attention. The following article was forwarded to me from K4AQ of Atlanta. Independently written it is a commentary about the sad situation existing in Santa Barbara.
Folks, in my opinion the wireless industry is as frustrated with Staff, the Planning Commission, and the Supervisors as you and I are. This is not the first time that industry has stayed away from a Hearing pertaining to the Telecommunications Ordinance. Over the years I have seen the industry backing away little by little in its dealings with the County of Santa Barbara. They are simply not going to spend any more political or financial capital and wasting their time with an uncooperative local government. All sounds just like our situation doesn't it ! There is no level playing field here, the county wishes to control the entire agenda without listening to any other side and crafting an ordinance that works. If this County does not want good telecommunications services then fine, there are plenty more towns in America where the industry can grow and make a profit without spending their resources on consultants, lobbyists, and lawyers. In the end the consumer suffers. And in our case we as Amateurs are simply lumped in with the rest of the mess.
Instead of working with the industry and the Amateur Radio community and coming up with a model of cooperation and understanding the County has separated itself from the public and elected to roll their own, the result is the creation of a paperwork monster that no one can deal with.
If an ordinance cannot stand on its own merit and equitably serve the community then it deserves to fail. The Telecommunications Ordinance is bankrupt and broke. Until the Supervisors recognize this fact then nothing is going to change.
Bill Talanian
-----Original Message----- From: Outlook 4Mobility [mailto:no_reply@outlook4mobility.com] Sent: Monday, 18 July, 2005 19:14 To: List Member Subject: Commentary 4Mobility, July 18, 2005, "Where Was The Wireless Industry?"
By Andrew M. Seybold <<mailto:andy@outlook4mobility.com?subject=Comments on your commentary>andy@4mobility.com> July 18, 2005
---------- Where Was The Wireless Industry?
Okay, I admit it, I am upset and for a good reason. This week I attended a meeting of the Santa Barbara Planning Commission at which the commissioners were to consider amendments to the Santa Barbara Telecommunications Facilities Ordinance.
As many of you know, ahead of this meeting I prepared a white paper about why we need more cell sites now and in the future (available for free on our web site www.4Mobility.com). I sent a copy of this paper to each commissioner and I talked to representatives of two wireless networks that assured me they would be represented at the meeting by both technical and legal people.
Guess what? When I showed up at the meeting, only one wireless network operator had sent representatives, and they were technical people who were not able to discuss the legal ramifications. The other network operator was a no-show and no one else from the industry showed up. The result was that the County of Santa Barbara Planning Commission voted to accept the recommendations of its staff (no surprise there) and the ordinance now makes it even tougher for wireless cell sites to be installed in some zoning designations of the county, and the entire process will take longer and be scrutinized more closely.
Some of the other changes will also cost wireless network operators more money and time in designing wireless sites. Most of the push-back by the commissioners was because their county council pointed out how little jurisdiction they really have because of federal regulations. They decided to accept the changes that give them more control over the wireless operators who are, after all, trying to get away with whatever they can get away with and ruin the county by putting up thousands of wireless cell sites.
One of the revisions in wording states that wireless operators will have to prove the need for new sites based on coverage (not coverage and capacity requirements as I tried to have it amended). This has already proven to be a problem since one of the commissioners recently drove to a proposed site location and had plenty of signal from the wireless network in question. Now he is fighting the need for a new site, even though during busy periods it is overloaded.
The immediate consequence of this vote is that several sites within the county that should have been approved at staff level will now require a hearing before the entire planning commission that does not understand any of the ramifications of what it passed. Forefront in their decision was their dismay that under the federal siting law they could not deny a second, third, fourth, or as one commissioner put it, a dozen or more wireless networks from locating in the same area.
Yes, I know. In the grand scheme of things, Santa Barbara is a small county and people at the various wireless service providers' operations headquarters cannot jump on a plane and fly all over the country, nor can the CITA, which has promised to become involved at a state and local level. However, I believe that ordinances such as this one as amended will be used as guidelines for other counties and cities in California and potentially in other states as well.
I have to assume that we are not the only area where this is happening. There is so much misinformation out there regarding cell sites and the need for more that I am sure this is not an isolated case. The wireless industry continues to complain (as do I) that it is being unduly restricted when it comes to building additional cell sites, but when given the opportunity to educate those in charge at counties and cities, the wireless industry is a no-show.
In the long term, it is the consumers of wireless services that have been shortchanged. They will continue to complain about poor coverage, dropped calls and the like. They will continue to elevate their cries to state public utility commissions, organizations such as Consumer Reports, which has a site where complaints are logged and shared, and the FCC where the number of complaints logged against each provider is shown in the aggregate.
The circle will remain unbroken. Consumers will complain to PUCs, the FCC and others about poor service, and local governments will continue to be upset that the FCC trumps them in some areas of the decision-making process and will pass new ordinances making it tougher than ever to gain new site approval. How do they think network operators are going to fix the problems?
Most of the changes to our ordinance were adopted so the county could feel it had taken back some of its authority that had been preempted by the FCC. It became very clear from listening to the commissioners' comments that they really resented not having complete control over the entire process. They cannot use health issues as a reason to preclude sites from being built and they have to let networks build in areas where another network operator already has a site.
The argument I raised about needing new cell sites in order to provide additional capacity fell on deaf ears. So did my comments about wireless phones now outnumbering wired phones in the United States and the fact that they will continue to increase in numbers. I tried to explain that new services employing data capabilities will require more cell sites to meet ever-increasing capacity demands.
Not only did commercial wireless networks lose at this week's meeting, so did amateur radio operators. Under the amendments to this ordinance, if I want to put up a simple wire antenna between my house and a tree I will need a permit. Depending on where I live, I might even be required to obtain a conditional use permit.
The only winners under the terms of these modifications to the ordinance are those who want to install a Wi-Fi (or WiMAX) system on a home or business to provide services to themselves or others. The county seems perfectly willing to permit single antennas used for these unlicensed services to be erected without permits if they do not protrude more than 14 feet above an existing building or structure. Perhaps the future of commercial wireless networks in our county lies in the use of microcells placed on houses within a neighborhood. It appears from what I have seen that I could dot an entire community with these small antennas and not have to worry about permits or other requirements even if I charged money for the service.
The wireless community lost another round this week. Not in New York or Los Angeles, but in Santa Barbara County. Most of the industry does not seem to care about what is happening in this county or others like it around the United States. I guess since neither the wireless industry nor the organizations founded to support it will become active in these battles, we will continue to see more restrictive ordinances.
This will make it more difficult to build new sites to provide better service, and it will be more expensive for everyone. Education is a valuable tool we should be using at state and local levels as well as in communities where wireless customers live and work. This week I also gave a speech about wireless services to a small group of executives in the city of Santa Barbara. When I asked if any of them were happy with the wireless coverage they have now, the answer was no. It didn't matter which network they were on, they were all unhappy with their coverage, the number of dropped calls and what they see as a lack of responsiveness by wireless operators to fix coverage problems. When I explained that all of the operators want to fix these problems but were being hamstrung by local governments, they understood the issue and, I believe, left with a new empathy for wireless network operators. This speech was given the day after the planning commission voted 5-0 to accept the new revisions to the ordinance, so it really didn't matter.
The wireless industry has an uphill battle ahead the fact that the FCC trumps local regulations bugs the locals so they try to gain an advantage. Unfortunately, the advantage is not so they can see to it that their citizens have the wireless service they want and need, it is to be able to thumb their nose at the feds and say, "See, you won't let us regulate our own county so we found a way to do it." And they will use every tool they have to keep the feds and the big, rich wireless network operators from being able to dictate to them.
Politics at its finest with no help from the wireless industry, and no regard for the citizens that live and work in the county. I guess that is the American way!
Andrew M. Seybold
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