WASHINGTON — AT&T and Verizon recently rejected a proposal by FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to use San Jose’s approach to small cells as a template for similar deployments in other cities.
The statements by Verizon and AT&T were issued just hours after Rosenworcel released the model agreements for small cell and 5G deployments negotiated by the City of San Jose, according to fiercewireless.com.
Verizon said that while it is pleased to have reached a path forward with San Jose and a few other cities, the process for getting there was neither quick nor easy. The company said the costs associated with some of these arrangements also are high — far exceeding the costs incurred by cities themselves, and it would be a mistake to assume that they would be economical in other locations, according to the same article.
Likewise, AT&T said the company “has proposed cost-based recurring fees to place small cells on city structures at less than $50. The rate structure in the San Jose agreement runs up to $2,500 per site. If conservative industry projections accurately estimate small cell deployments at 800,000 by 2026, San Jose’s rate structure when applied to cities nationwide would cost approximately $2 billion incrementally, leading by necessity to less expansive small cell deployment in communities across the nation.”
