As expected, Industry Canada released its final Conditions of Licence for Mandatory Roaming and Antenna Tower and Site Sharing and to Prohibit Exclusive Site Arrangements on Friday.
These rules were initially going to make every tower in Canada available for sharing by mobile service providers – providing two benefits: easier entry for winners of spectrum in the upcoming auction; and, reducing the proliferation of towers that nobody wants in their backyard.
Industry Canada backed down from its original intent to apply the new sharing conditions on all current spectrum holders: broadcasters, utilities, emergency service radios, among others. Instead the rules will only be applied among mobile license holders.
The public utilities had complained that:
Public utilities noted that their sites are generally located within the confines of enclosures around utility installations (e.g. hydroelectric transformers and switching facilities). Admission to such enclosures is highly restricted and requires and could compromise the integrity of critical utility infrastructure.
The others had similar cop-outs:
Public safety agencies expressed similar concerns to those applicable to national security sites requiring highly restricted access. It was also submitted that broadcast sites already tend to be the subject of extensive sharing among broadcasters for technical and economic reasons while generally being poorly suited for other radiocommunication system architectures.
So what?
Industry Canada could have kept to its principles. Tower owners could easily impose conditions on which crews are permitted to perform installation and maintenance in order to deal with the “specialized training, equipment and procedures to protect personnel.” If the broadcast towers aren’t suitable for other “radiocommunication system architectures” then there won’t be many requests. These could all of been handled in the course of operators requesting access and tower owners responding with conditions in their proposal.
Why did Industry Canada back down?
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