The FCC’s Wireless Bureau concluded that federal law preempted pa...
The FCC’s Wireless Bureau concluded that federal law preempted parts of an Anne Arundel County, Md., zoning ordinance that involved radio frequency interference. A local law required that before receiving a county zoning certificate, wireless tower owners must demonstrate…
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that a tower didn’t interfere with the county’s public safety operations. If interference were shown, the county was allowed to revoke a zoning certificate. Cingular Wireless challenged those parts of the local ordinance in April, and the county sought dismissal of the petition, saying the courts -- not the FCC -- had exclusive purview over zoning actions that local govts. undertook that involved wireless facilities. The Bureau, in an order released Mon., disagreed, granting Cingular’s petition for a declaratory ruling. The provisions of the ordinance that were under challenge regulated radio frequency interference (RFI), “not traditional zoning functions,” and were preempted by federal law, the bureau held. “At the same time, we remain concerned about interference to the county’s public safety communications system and we expect that the parties will continue to work cooperatively to resolve these problems,” in line with previous FCC guidance, the agency said. It required the county, Cingular and Nextel to report to the bureau’s Commercial Wireless Div. within 30 and 90 days on progress of efforts at mitigating interference to public safety systems. The reported interference began in 1997 and involved 800 MHz public safety communications in the county. The county adopted an ordinance last year that required that before receiving a zoning certificate, a tower operator had to show that the planned site wouldn’t degrade or interfere with the county’s public radio systems. The FCC said: “The Commission and the federal courts have consistently found that the Commission’s authority in the area of RFI is exclusive and any attempt by state or local governments to regulate in the area of RFI is preempted.”