FCC, American Tower reach agreement

The FCC (www.fcc.gov) and American Tower (www.americantower.com have entered into a consent decree regarding apparent violations by American Tower. The decree, announced Aug. 2, ends an enforcement proceeding the FCC began against American Tower after it allegedly broke antenna structure rules.

In January, the FCC gave a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture to American Tower. The notice stated that American Tower may have violated sections of FCC rules that require companies to register antenna structures before construction, register existing antenna structures, post registration numbers, mark and light antennas structures and report antenna structure ownership changes.

After looking into the alleged violations, the FCC found American Tower apparently liable for $212,000. The investigation showed that American Tower failed to properly light one antenna structure during construction, failed to register two existing antenna structures, failed to notify the commission of ownership changes of 24 antenna structures and failed to post registration numbers on nine antenna structures.

The FCC also directed its enforcement bureau to further investigate American Tower’s compliance with antenna structure rules. American Tower responded to the notice this March. A month later, the two groups met and discussed American Tower’s compliance efforts. A compliance plan was created and American Tower agreed to implement it.

The compliance plan addresses five areas: tower acquisition, tower construction and modification, monitoring of lighting and painting, records of lighting outages and responses to Notices of Violation. The consent decree agreed upon includes the compliance plan and a voluntary contribution of $300,000 from American Tower to the United States Treasury. Now that American Tower has agreed to the compliance plan, the FCC has dropped its enforcement proceeding and its further investigation of American Tower.

Maggie Chen, American Tower spokeswoman, said the company had no interest in commenting on the case. John Winston with the FCC’s enforcement bureau said the commission’s comments could be found on its Web site.