Mari Silbey

Hello, everyone. I’m Mari Silbey with US Ignite. And this is our very first Ignite On Air podcast. We’re wading into these podcast waters by interviewing speakers that have participated in our Forum smart city workshop events. Today I am happy to introduce Sam Edelstein, Chief Data Officer for Syracuse, New York. Sam was part of our recent US Ignite Forum event on Smart City Small Cells, and I wanted to steal a bit more of his time to go into detail about how small cell deployments are working in Syracuse. Sam, welcome to the podcast.

Sam Edelstein

Thanks for having me.

Mari Silbey

So, first, I should say, the Forum workshop on small cells was also our very first online Forum event. We were supposed to meet up in person in Denver, but out of necessity and a healthy respect for social distancing, we transferred the event online. There were some technical hiccups, but I thought the conversation went really well and there was some good information coming out on how local governments are working with carriers to get these small cells deployed. Would you, would you agree? Do you think the discussion was a worthwhile one?

Sam Edelstein

Yeah, it was really interesting. All these different cities and states around the country are dealing with and interpreting things in their own way with, you know, guidance from the federal government. And so it’s interesting to see how different places have deployed and dealt with the issue themselves.

Mari Silbey

Now, in your case in Syracuse, you made a non-exclusive but pretty significant agreement for small cell deployments with Verizon recently. Can you tell us a little about that?

Sam Edelstein

Yeah. We had put together an overall ordinance for small cells a few years ago prior to the FCC order on small cells coming out, which was a bit restrictive. And, so once the FCC order came into play, the ordinance was just out of date, and Verizon Wireless had approached us and kind of talked to us about what that was, what it would look like to change over, and what it would mean for us to get 5G in small cells installed in the city.

It was nice to have that kind of attention, but we wanted to take seriously what our approach would be. Ultimately, we came to the conclusion that we have a major issue with connectivity and digital divide issues in the city. 5G doesn’t solve that, but we see it as a piece of the puzzle that can be resolved.

We also have a thriving unmanned aerial systems industry in this city and in the region that we think 5G can help to spur even more in just general interest in technology and communications infrastructure overall. And so it was our idea that while we didn’t love having guidance from the federal government on exactly what we needed to do, and that [it was] taking away a little bit of our control, ultimately having the technology installed and being among the first cities in the state, in the country to have this technology here was a useful thing that should pay dividends in the future.

Mari Silbey

Now, one thing you mentioned in our event is that part of your agreement with Verizon stipulates that they run a certain number of tests each year related to the impact of small cell radio frequency waves on people’s health. That strikes me as a pretty big deal because there’s been a lot of public backlash. And we’ve seen more of it even recently against 5G small cells specifically around perceived health risk. Even where we’re seeing a lot of those risks or perceived risks being debunked, has the fact that there will be testing by Verizon changed the conversations you’re having with the community about the small cell installations?

Sam Edelstein

I mean, it’s hard to tell exactly. There are still people who will raise concerns with us even despite having those specifics in our agreement. I think it certainly helps us to say we have done what we think is appropriate to provide the correct protections, all within the lines of what we believe, what the science and another health experts recommend. It certainly may, you know, have given some help to certain residents that were kind of on the fence. It’s certainly what we were able to do.

And in our discussions with Verizon Wireless, we said look, this thing isn’t going to pass our common council if we can’t get these kind of guarantees, and so this is something that really needs to be in there, and they were agreeable you know. They had no concern, really, over the health impacts, and so were agreeable to testing as well.

Mari Silbey

Right. Well, it’s interesting, because I have talked to some folks out of Denver who now say that the community engagement issue and particularly engaging around this perceived health risk is probably their number one issue with small cell deployments right now. You know, they’ve solved a lot of the permitting streamlining and figuring out what those smart poles are going look like, but dealing with the community and getting the community to understand has been a huge challenge for them.

Sam Edelstein

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, you know, that was the purpose of putting something in writing within the ordinance that, or the agreement that we came to. There will always be people who have concerns, but there are also people who have concerns about, you know, other things that we do, and the hope is that we can just be open and transparent about our process and, you know, then also be able to require testing so that we can always fall back on that. And if there is a concern that comes up, hopefully there isn’t, but if there were, then there’s an avenue to resolving that.

Mari Silbey

You’ve also emphasized the importance of equity in broadband and small cell deployment. How does that translate into the conversations you’ve had with Verizon?

Sam Edelstein

Yeah again, I mentioned before connectivity and digital divide issues are a really big challenge for us in Syracuse right now. We see it even more so as students and others are at home working or trying to do classes. And there is just, if you don’t have Internet, if you don’t have a computer, it’s really challenging. Again, I don’t think that 5G and small cells resolve that issue, but it plays a piece. It serves as a piece of the puzzle towards resolving the issue. So ensuring that we have that kind of coverage citywide, and not just in downtown or not just by the university where a lot of times things are normally rolled out was really important to us.

Again, we essentially said, look, here’s the data about where problems are. Here are where our priority areas are for rollout, and ultimately we’d like to see this rolled out across the city in a relatively rapid fashion. And we think that’s probably the only way that it will get passed again by the common council. And so you know, to the degree that you can commit to, or at least show us a plan for how that will work, that will help all of us to be able to move forward and ultimately will provide the best service for our community, which is ultimately what we’re concerned about.

Additionally, if we think that small cells and 5G ultimately provide the opportunity for autonomous vehicles or better connectivity to unmanned aerial systems that are flying around when you really need that across the city, it doesn’t work if it’s only in a very specific part of the city.

Mari Silbey

Do you think that there are other ways for other communities to negotiate some of these broadband equity issues given guidance or mandates that are coming from the federal government and/or from state laws? How do other communities address some of these challenges?

Sam Edelstein

I mean, we were just really open about what we thought would be passed in terms of whatever agreement we were making, you know. Certainly given the federal requirements there’s other ways that the telecommunications companies could get at still installing them. But I think it was in everybody’s interest to be good partners here. What we said is, you know, we’d uphold our part under the bargain on figuring out our permanent process on accepting what the fees are that are set up by the FCC. And in return, what we wanted was to ensure that we had broad deployment and again protections relative to health, and also that I think that we could continue to think about partnership when it comes to innovation with technology related to 5G across the city.

Mari Silbey

Last question for you. What is the outlook for small cell deployments in Syracuse for the rest of the year? And do you think it’s changed given the current health crisis?

Sam Edelstein

Yeah, well, so far, even though the governor in New York has restricted a lot of construction across the state, telecommunications construction remains an essential service. So I don’t know that there will be a huge impact, at least as things stand related to small cell construction. We have approved about 100 permits to this point. There are about 50 sites that are ready to go, and there have been between five and 10 small cells that have actually been deployed and are ready to be turned on as soon as there’s more of a density. And we expect that we’ll see hundreds more in the coming couple of years. So, you know, I think it’s something that will move pretty quickly, which we’re excited about.

Mari Silbey

Well, that’s great. And I’m happy for you. And I’m happy we got to have you on this podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Sam Edelstein

Thanks so much for having me.

Mari Silbey

I’m Mari Silbey, and my guest has been Sam Edelstein, Chief Data Officer for Syracuse, New York. This is Ignite On Air, and to learn more about US Ignite as a nonprofit and all of our public-private partnership programs, please visit us online at US dash Ignite dot org. For this podcast In particular, I also want to thank all of the sponsors for the US Ignite Forum program, including Ingram Micro, CommScope, AT&T, Axis, and Deloitte. Thanks for listening.