I'll be the first to admit that it's seemingly a love-hate relationship with any carrier; we love to have the service but hate to foot the bill. The carriers don't always get a fair shake and most times even if they did, they seem to grow numb.
Back in June when I wrote in Indoor Mobility, Martin Cooper inventor of the mobile phone raised a good question, "Who owns the spectrum?"--we (the public) own it, so then why is it so expensive to use?
Jeffrey Krauss, President of Telecommunications and Technology Policy published, "CAPITAL CURRENTS--Exorbitant Rights-of-Way Costs," in CedMagazine.com. He writes, "The FCC's broadband plan recognizes that exorbitant rights-of-way (ROW) rents charged by local governments can be a barrier to the deployment and availability of broadband service."
Then, getting back to what Martin Cooper said, "Who owns the spectrum?" The simple answer is that the American public owns both the spectrum and the lands that carriers use to lay cable, fiber or build and erect towers upon or traverse in various other manners. Federal, state and local governments are collecting ROW rents. The economic impact is that rents charged by government to carriers are passed on to the customers of the carriers. These ROW rents are in addition to the taxes.
"The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is amending its right-of-way regulations to update the linear right-of-way rent schedule.... The rent schedule covers most linear rights-of-way granted under Title V of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, as amended (FLPMA), and Section 28 of the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, as amended (MLA). Those laws require the holder of a right-of-way grant to pay annually, in advance, the fair market value to occupy, use, or traverse public lands for facilities such as power lines, fiber optic lines, pipelines, roads, and ditches." What that means is ROW rents are increased substantially.
It seems that there's a negative economic impact and fewer benefits of expanding the reaches of Internet and service access to every corner of the U.S. to reach those 14-24 million without any Internet to solidify a national broadband plan. The other premise is that the people own the land, collectively speaking, so then why should government continue to expand itself using funds from taxes and ROW rents, when it seems prudent to provide a greater benefit to reduce costs to the general public?
Maybe I'm grousing about taxes but if you look a little deeper you will discover that the local governments have also parlayed planning and zoning restrictions in their favor for years--in fact when I made a deal (1997) with those local devils to obtain "Special Exception" to our former property for adaptive reuse, it was with the condition "that we would not build or build to suit for the use of any form of towers" in which we were actively engaged with a company to do just that. No rents for me but the county effectively excluded any competition and won those ROW rents and a tower was erected nearby.
Why does government charge ROW rents to utilities and carriers to use public lands? These ROW expenses and taxes are passed onto consumers and businesses. The "greater good" benefit is seemingly diminished by egregious taxes and recovery fees paid.
Now interestingly enough, Jeffrey goes on to write about ROW rents, "All of this would seem like an ordinary contract dispute if it were not for Section 253(a) of the Communications Act. That provides that “no state or local statute or regulation, or other state or local legal requirement, may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting the ability of any entity to provide any interstate or intrastate telecommunications service." In business it’s called "cost prohibitive." Government continues to charge rents and raise them based upon market conditions--and then tax us again for what we supposedly already own for our common enjoyment and benefit. Thinking about it a little further, I really still don’t like the idea of the FCC auctioning off spectrum either. Every property owner enjoys rights and perpetuities of ownership except they never get any ROW rents for RF passing through and bouncing off their land. Sound far-fetched? So does paying for what the public supposedly already owns.
