Wireless Association: Exempt Deployments from Environmental Policy Act
The Federal Communications Commission is seeking comment on the proposal.
Jake Neenan
WASHINGTON, April 1, 2025 – The Federal Communications Commission is asking for input on a proposal from the wireless industry to exempt many wireless deployments from federal environmental reviews.
“While many collocations and site modifications are eligible for exclusions, reviews that are required can take months, particularly when site access is restricted or fieldwork is seasonal, as often occurs,” CTIA, the major 5G industry group, wrote in a Thursday petition.
The group asked the FCC to initiate a proceeding and eventually find that wireless deployments for geographic spectrum licenses, the kind mobile carriers use, are not “major federal actions” under the National Environmental Policy Act, and thus don’t require reviews under the law.
NEPA covers federal construction projects, requiring a slate of environmental reviews before one can proceed. CTIA argued that the FCC issuing licenses to use certain wireless frequencies in certain areas didn’t translate to federal control over the individual radio projects, citing a 2023 law that made room for agencies to narrow NEPA’s scope and an executive order from President Donald Trump rescinding existing White House guidance and asking agencies to streamline NEPA rules.
“The Commission’s control over licensed operations is an insufficient connection to cause the construction of individual facilities to constitute an MFA under NEPA,” the group wrote. The document was penned by Umair Javed, CTIA's senior vice president and general counsel, and Scott Bergmann and Amy Bender, senior vice president and vice president, respectively, of regulatory affairs.
CTIA asked the agency to find that mixed-use sites, towers or poles with equipment using both geographic and site-specific licenses, were also not covered by the law. Deployments that require a special FCC registration because of their height or proximity to an airport would still be covered under the CTIA proposal.
In 2018 during the first Trump administration, then-FCC Chairman Ajit Pai moved to exempt certain small-cell wireless deployment from NEPA review. A court struck down the move on the grounds the agency didn’t properly consider the potential harms, but didn’t reach the issue of whether the exemption itself would be illegal.
Pai took over as head of CTIA on Tuesday.
Brendan Carr, the current chairman, was a commissioner at the time and voted in favor of the measure, along with others aimed at making it easier to deploy or modify 5G infrastructure.
The agency sought comment on CTIA’s proposal via a March 31 notice. Comments in the docket are due April 30, with replies due May 15.
The group also asked the FCC to “take additional reasonable actions to update its rules,” around NEPA. Those included proposing clearer standards and timelines for environmental reviews.
