The FCC has announced a new agreement to facilitate the expansion of cellular antenna sites. Commissioner Brendan Carr announced the agreement with the Advisory Council on Historical Preservation and the National Conference of State Historic Conservation Officers on Historic Properties.
The FCC Wireless Telecommunications Office issued the Modified National Programming Agreement for the Joint Location of Wireless Antennas (NPA Placement). This updates an agreement between the FCC, ACHP and NCSHPO in 2001 and could take effect shortly, once it is published in the Federal Register.
The amendment updates the procedure for reviewing the joint location (or adding wireless devices to existing tower sites). Previously, a joint location assignment that concerned outdoor excavation paints from the current tower site did not qualify for the simplified overhaul procedure established through the joint-location NPA. This conflicted with the simplified review procedure that applies when vendors dismantle and reposition a wireless design, a procedure that allows deployment and digging of up to nine meters outdoors of the existing site. The amendment resolves this inconsistency by bringing the joint location APM in line with the tower repositioning review.
Carr noted that streamlining small site expansions is quite critical to 5G design and to achieve limited underlayout resistance. Operators are increasingly adding cellular outer edge computing capability and backup force to tower sites, requiring small site extensions. With the agreement, operators are willing to reuse existing wireless towers, unlike the design of redundant designs.