I’ve got to confess that I don’t understand the editors’ of the Wall Street Journal’s argument about high local rental/attachment fees for cellphone 5G expansion:
Although mobile devices that run on 5G won’t be available until sometime next year, carriers are already negotiating with local officials for public rights of way to attach small cell sites—typically the size of a backpack—to street poles. But some local politicians seem to think it is their right to squeeze carriers.
Electric utilities typically charge telecom companies about $20 to attach to their poles. New York City has set a minimum $4,200 annual rent for each cell pole attachment in Manhattan. But “proposers might wish to bid more than the minimum because the order of selection of individual poles within each zone will be based on the amount of pole compensation each proposer bids,†the city says. Tony Soprano would be impressed.
San Jose, which wants annual rents between $750 to $2,500, has conditioned approvals on seven-figure donations to a “Digital Inclusion Fund†for low-income neighborhoods. The Los Angeles deputy chief information officer says the city will “need to see an equitable number of 5G permits in South L.A. and Watts†as in wealthier neighborhoods.
Let’s flip the argument around. Should local jurisdictions subsidize the build-out of 5G by private companies who will derive private profits from its deployment? Do businesses have a right to clutter up the landscape with hundreds of times more antennae and distribution boxes? Only if they’re willing to pay for it.
Allow me to make a modest proposal. Let the market decide. Let New York and San Jose set their own rental rates. Let phone companies decide whether it makes financial sense for them to pay the rental rates. In the worst case Manhattan and San Jose will become 5G dead zones but those will be their choices and they’re entitled to make them. They will eschew potential rental fees and the growth of whatever new businesses spring up to make use of the greater speed and those will be their choices, too.
That’s lazy rent seeking by the telecom companies.
Instead of paying the government; the telecom companies could pay private homeowners for the right to deploy antennas. There be lots of volunteers if it’s 1000/2000 a year….
I’m in!