At Tuesday night’s village Development Board meeting, Code Administrator Paul Blaine presented research and a draft code amendment on requirements for 5G cell sites.

“It’s very difficult at this time to tell exactly what (5G) is going to mean to the village, but we’re preparing for it,” he said in an interview Thursday. “We’ve done a lot of research to see what’s happening in other municipalities. Truthfully, I didn’t expect it so soon to be coming here. What Verizon is doing is reaching out to us and saying, ‘Please be prepared for this.’ (The draft amendment) is to help both the village and the service provider have a clear understanding of the process.”

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What is 5G?

A Verizon 4G wireless antenna is seen on the Madden’s building on Main Street in Saranac Lake Thursday. A future 5G network is expected to require more antennas, closer together. (Enterprise photo — Griffin Kelly)

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In its most basic terms, 5G is the next generation in wireless services and will transmit data faster than previous generations. The internet traditionally relates to a system of connected computers. In the past decades, we’ve added phones, tablets, TVs, video game consoles, smart speakers and even entire homes to that system, creating the “internet of things.” With 5G, there is the potential to add even more devices and services.

“Everything, like even appliances in our home, are going to be able to accept and send out information,” Blaine said. “We’ve heard some things about it like our refrigerators being able to order groceries or our bathrooms being able to give information about our health. Then we go to more public things like driverless vehicles.”

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Draft amendment

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The amendment Blaine presented is just a draft and has the potential to change. There will also be public input sessions in the future, he said.

The draft would add more than a dozen new lines of text to the village code. It proposes keeping small cell sites inconspicuous and limiting them to village and commercial properties. One common practice is attaching 5G units to decorative light poles, but Blaine and the board didn’t think that was the best option for Saranac Lake.

“If it was a different design of our light poles, that might have worked out better, but with the lights on top, it really limited us,” he said.

The village wouldn’t handle cell units going on utility poles on thoroughfares such as River Street or Lake Flower because those are part of state Route 86 and maintained by the state Department of Transportation.

With 5G, there is less of a focus on large cell towers and more on multiple small antennas closer together.

“Our development code standards go to the towers also, but the addition to the amendment really is to address the smaller cell sites,” Blaine said. “5G definitely is going to be spaced much closer, and it really depends on the topography and the buildings and things like that. You can’t say it’s going to be every 500 feet. It could be closer. It could be further apart, but I think the average Verizon distance is going to be 500 feet.”

Federal Communications Commission rules might give more leeway to service providers in matters of distance.

“We’re going to try our very best to keep the spacing as far apart as possible and make them so that they don’t stand out,” Blaine said. “But if (the provider) can provide an argument of why they need (units) much closer, then there is a lot of discretion in that. They could possibly challenge the village.”

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What does it mean?

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In 2018, the FCC banned what it called “short-sighted municipal roadblocks that have the effect of prohibiting deployment of 5G.” This means service providers would face shorter delays and have less red tape to deal with at a local level to install small cell sites. A 2018 FCC report brings up multiple examples of what providers saw as unreasonable municipalities.

“AT&T states that localities in Maryland, California, and Massachusetts have imposed fees so high that it has had to pause or decrease deployments,” the report says. “T-Mobile states that a community in Colorado and one in California have lengthy pre-application processes for all small cell installations that include notification to all nearby households, a public meeting, and the preparation of a report, none of which these jurisdictions view as triggering a shot clock.”

Named for a basketball device, a shot clock is the amount of time a municipality has to review a small cell station. It’s typically 60 to 90 days.

“This is what we’re trying to get our mind around,” Blaine said. “Exactly what can we do? We do have to comply with federal law, of course, but that does allow us some input on location, aesthetics, things like that.”

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Payment

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At this point, Blaine said it’s not clear what the village would charge a service provider for installing a small cell site, but there is the potential for a yearly fee on the antennas.

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What’s next?

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Broadband and wireless internet service are often seen as lacking in the North Country. In the past few years, the state has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into broadband throughout New York. There’s also a strong federal push for 5G, and the FCC recently proposed investing $9 billion into 5G wireless across the country. Similar to the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the U.S. is now in competition with China to become the more interconnected and technologically advanced nation.

Blaine said it’s unclear when 5G will actually come to Saranac Lake.

Currently, Blaine said the village hasn’t been approached about taking on 5G cell sites, but rather more 4G units. He didn’t have an exact number but said there are a few dozen 4G sites in the village.

“I haven’t heard of any 5G sites in the village — and, quite frankly, the northern area,” he said.