5G In Your Right-of-Way: Understanding the Legal Landscape (Update)

5G, as both a novel technology and marketing term, has become ubiquitous in recent months. In conjunction with the widespread nationwide marketing campaigns has come a rush of land use applications by carriers to install small cell facilities in the public rights-of-way as well as to upgrade existing rooftop and tower sites with 5G equipment. This has caused alarm among many local land-use officials, unsure of how to handle the influx.

This program begins with an overview of the wireless telecommunications space before diving right into a discussion of the current developments in the telecommunications industry, including new and updated federal laws and regulations, and how they impact a local government's capacity to manage its own rights-of-way and to draft telecommunications land use regulations that hold up against federal preemptions. 

This program will benefit municipal attorneys, land use boards and their counsel, zoning board attorneys, as well as county and state counsel, and anyone who deals with wireless communications facilities on proprietary or regulatory level.

1. Review key provisions of the 1996 Telecommunications Act (TCA) and 2012 Spectrum Act 

2. Assess recent FCC rulings and federal regulations that interpret the TCA and Spectrum Act

3. Consider how federal regulations limit and preempt local regulations for both small cell sites and macro cell sites

4. Examine the current legal framework as a means of applying legal principles to a rapidly evolving technological landscape

5. Utilize applications that assist local land use boards and code officials in understanding the intersection between physical wireless facilities and the legal framework