WIRELESS Leadership Act

Winning the International Race for Economic Leadership and Expanding Service to Support Leadership Act or the WIRELESS Leadership Act

This bill imposes limits on state and local review and regulation of requests to construct wireless telecommunication facilities.

Specifically, states and localities must grant or deny requests to place, modify, or construct personal wireless service (PWS) facilities by a specified deadline. This deadline varies based on the nature of the request and the proposed facility. If a state or locality fails to act on a request within that timeframe, the request is deemed granted. On the day a decision to deny a request is made, the state or locality must publish the decision and provide it to the requesting party.

Further, the bill expands an existing prohibition on unreasonable discrimination in the regulation of such requests. Under the bill, any discrimination among PWS facilities or communications service providers is prohibited. For example, a state or locality may not grant preferential or exclusive use of facilities to a particular provider or class of providers. However, states and localities may establish objective, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory engineering standards, safety requirements, or aesthetic requirements.

Finally, the bill establishes requirements for fees imposed by states and localities for consideration of a request. For example, such fees must be (1) competitively neutral, technology neutral, and nondiscriminatory; (2) established in advance and publicly disclosed; and (3) based on actual and direct costs to the state or locality.

Written by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. All summary versions on Congress.gov