Transcript: Ignite On Air Podcast
Smart City Small Cells With New York City
Mari Silbey
Hello and welcome back to the Ignite on Air podcast. I’m Mari Silbey with US Ignite, and I’m happy to welcome as my guest today Al Jenkins, former deputy commissioner of telecommunications planning for New York City. Al, thanks for joining us today.
Al Jenkins
Thank you very much, Mari. Happy to join.
Mari Silbey
We’re here to talk about small cells again, the topic of our recent US Ignite Forum event. Now, during that workshop, one issue that we touched on but didn’t explore in detail was the use of infrastructure beyond street lights and utility poles for small cell deployments. And I kind of want to start there. What infrastructure should communities be thinking about as potential assets for use in the rollout of small cells besides polls?
Al Jenkins
Well, you know Mari, I think street lighting utility poles are natural telecommunications infrastructure attractions because they come already wired in most cases, with both electric power and fiber optics. They also come with the vertical height needed for small cell operators to place their transmission equipment relatively close to the potential subscribers while while trying to maximize coverage areas. Plus, there’s hundreds, if not thousands, of these already in place, which could provide the quickest and easiest time to market solutions. I’m gonna sort of describe some of the factors that small cell engineers look for in the use of municipal assets in some of the urban markets beyond sort of streetlight poles. I mean sites, sites that are close to consistent, densely populated areas or high traffic corridors, sites with easy access, sites with easy and quick leasing and permitting turnaround times, and sites with existing utilities, and without the high construction costs to them. These are primarily all time to market and quick leasing and construction considerations. These same decision making choices can be found in other sites beyond street lighting utility poles, of course. Government buildings, digital kiosks, bus shelters, um, railway catenaring, water tanks, ah, bridges, billboards, utility transmission structures and other transportation, steel structures hosting highway signage, and of course, radio towers are all viable choices for engineers to contemplate while citing the best telecommunications candidate for each small cell location. The best advice here is to manage the municipal infrastructure with a telecommunications site manager, either one that’s homegrown within the agency or, you know, hiring an outside telecom site manager. That site manager can then understand the municipality’s complete city asset inventory and can market those assets to the telecommunications industry for lease. This is an excellent way, um, to generate newfound revenues and a broker for next generation technology services.
Mari Silbey
And I do want to go back to the revenue question in a minute. But I love that answer because I love the idea of giving municipal leaders a new lens to look at their municipal infrastructure through. I want to also touch on the idea, you talked about power, for example, also fiber obviously is necessary for backhaul for most small cells. Should communities also be thinking about using fiber or even conduit they own as an asset here when they’re talking with wireless carriers, or do wireless carriers only want to use their own fiber or partnered fiber for small cell deployments?
Al Jenkins
That’s a good question and has sort of multiple answers. But so well, I could start by suggesting that fiber is clearly the preferable choice for small cell backhaul when abundantly available. But it’s not as abundantly available as you’d think for the purposes of small cell deployment. I mean, even in cities like New York, where there are more than about 15 major fiber optic providers, they still have difficulties getting fiber to potentially every small cell location that mind you four major operators would like to locate small cells to you know, mind you, there are thousands of these small cells needed in urban market places like New York, and to expect fiber to either be newly laid or, for that much for that much street disruption to have to occur where fiber may already lie would not anticipate really the sheer construction and roadway disruption necessary to deploy the miles of fiber that’s necessary in a very short period of time to many anticipated small cells. I mean municipalities should carefully coordinate with telecommunications providers regarding new fiber deployments, so as to minimize the impact of such ambitious street construction considerations. I mean many cities are developing or modifying their one-dig policies around these considerations today. It’s going to take years, however, Mari to deploy the kind of fiber infrastructure to provide fiber backhaul to every new small cell site. I mean, when municipalities do grant permissions for operators to deploy new conduit for fiber. The municipality should also require that they lay new conduit or make available conduit space for municipal use in all cases. I mean, no matter how many operators request new conduit deployments. This does several things municipalities haven’t done effectively in the past. It mitigates the number of times street openings or closures are required for the very same purposes. It allows municipalities to be flexible on when, where, and why fiber should be deployed. It allows the municipalities to generate revenues by either leasing dark fiber or allowing other agencies like education or public safety, access to critical infrastructure when and where necessary. It also allows municipalities to promote new fiber deployments in underserved neighborhoods, and it also allows municipalities to get out in front of their respective comprehensive plans where new zoning might contemplate affordable housing or industrial zones or new retail areas, um or more importantly, where new hospitals, schools or libraries are to be built.
Mari Silbey
So you bring up a very good point there, which is looking ahead to building and construction and development that needs to take place in a community and the sort of dig-once rules that go along with that. Do you think going forward that we might get something, let’s say in a new stimulus-oriented infrastructure bill, for example, that we might be able to get language in something like that that stipulates for inclusion of connectivity, whether it’s conduit or fiber or something else, um, into new infrastructure builds? Again, sort of whether they’re government funded in some kind of infrastructure stimulus bill or whether it’s commercial ventures that nonetheless require public right of way.
Al Jenkins
While the short answer is yes, I mean, I think connectivity has become ever so apparent as a vital and necessary utility that every person should have access to on an equitable basis. I believe that the federal government, particularly the FCC, has been advancing new spectrum policies as well as recommending siting policies that support the advancement of small scale deployments across the U. S. Some of the siting policy are a bit contentious, of course, with many urban government authorities because it mandates costs, time to market shot clocks, and access to municipal infrastructure without local authority or fair market value considerations. But I mean, if local authorities can put in place a smart, efficient, and streamlined time to market use of municipal infrastructure, I believe carriers would accept such regulations provided it gets them to the marketplace that meets their stakeholders requirements. Many small cell operators are already taking advantage by purchasing new spectrum for the deployment of millimeter wave and fixed wireless equipment, which can exponentially support the rollout of next generation technologies with or without fiber for both fronthaul and backhaul voice and data traffic, um, municipalities have to create policies which can accommodate this new equipment type so that carriers can utilize city infrastructure to quickly deploy with the combination of municipal government agencies allowing access to their citywide real property assets, streamlining zoning and permitting policies, and affordable site cost, I believe connectivity, particularly to underserved communities, should become a more quick and automatic process.
Mari Silbey
You talked a little bit again about, or referenced revenue again there sort of in that discussion. Do you think there’s a way, given what the the current FCC mandate is, for municipalities to look at offering some other kind of value to carriers, whether it’s shared infrastructure or installations that combine functions, not just small cells, but maybe also, for example, electric vehicle charging. Is there something else that communities can offer that both helps carriers get to market more quickly and also perhaps gives them some negotiating power in terms of making these agreements with the carriers?
Al Jenkins
Well, access to infrastructures is everything. I mean shared infrastructure will play a critical role in wireless and wireline networks going forward in order to have multiple providers providing wireless services in the same critical places. That’s very important because some of those critical places are now saturated. So you have to have a plan for some shared infrastructure or neutral host solution. For example, airports and stadiums, convention centers, transportation depots should all have a neutral host backbone to support various providers providing services like cellular WiFi, CBRS, and and IoT. Other shared infrastructure ideas municipalities should be considering are mini data centers, where multiple operators can locate a rack or multiple racks of radio equipment which are powered and provisioned with sufficient fiber. These many data centers can be owned by the municipality, which could collect substantial revenues. There’s that word again, as well as in-kind services for the use of such space. And I keep bringing it revenues with municipalities because municipalities typically and traditionally have sort of squandered hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue by not having a a a municipal citywide real property asset use plan. And so these revenues are very critical to these municipalities to proliferate their own smart city initiatives, many of which have always suggested and even now in the case now do not have the budget or funding for broadband, but they have very great smart city initiatives policies, but don’t have the funding, the funding to proceed here. And to the extent that you have the most critical asset that telecommunications providers are looking for, which is access to infrastructure and streamlined processes for zoning and permitting, this is the way you generate revenue to put into your funding for your smart city plans.
Mari Silbey
One final question, which is given the current health crisis, the Covid-19 health crisis, which is exposing connectivity gaps across the country and emphasizing the importance of this robust infrastructure and Internet access, do you think that there will be changes in the aftermath of this pandemic in how we deploy broadband to unserved and underserved populations?
Al Jenkins
I would hope federal, state, and local government strongly re commit to the time to market policies each have in place in order to proliferate broadband services to those that have been traditionally underserved or unserved. You know, in many states and cities, there is no one comprehensive policy that supports accelerating next generation broadband services to underserved communities. What I find is there is a kaleidoscope of legacy policies and advancing policies that try and support promoting broadband deployment to underserved neighborhoods. But municipalities can’t quite manage advancing smart broadband policies with actual real world deployment speeds or needs. That’s because in many cases you have to advance and accelerate available infrastructure use, fair market leasing costs per site. You have to advance master lease arrangements, streamline zoning and permitting processes, and craft reasonable timelines for on-street construction. If you don’t have policies that that that take in these considerations, you will unlikely be able to accelerate the connectivity gaps. I mean in most cases it’s because municipalities are good to great at crafting policies, rules, and regulations. But they lack the experience in managing infrastructure buildouts from multiple operators and carriers at the same time, which which need immediate access to municipal infrastructure. I think the digital divides have become very visible. If they weren’t in the past, and I do believe that there must be robust efforts in broadband deployments to underserved and unserved populations as the pandemic has made this vital infrastructure component less invisible.
Mari Silbey
And on that note and that call to action, we’re gonna close out for today. I do want to thank my guest on the air today, Al Jenkins, former deputy commissioner of telecommunications planning for New York City. Thank you for joining us, Al.
Al Jenkins
Thank you. It was my pleasure, Mari.
Mari Silbey
If you’re interested in learning more about US Ignite and public private partnership programs that we conduct, please visit our website at US dash Ignite dot org. I also want to thank the sponsors for our US Ignite Forum program including Ingram Micro, CommScope, AT&T, Axis, and Deloitte. Thanks for listening to the podcast.
