New WIRELESS Act Slashes Local Control Over Cell Towers: Approvals Now Automatic If City Misses 60-Day Deadline

The “Winning the International Race for Economic Leadership and Expanding Service to Support Leadership Act”—or the WIRELESS Leadership Act—is a major shakeup for anyone who relies on a cell phone signal or lives near where a new one might go up. The core of this bill is simple: it dramatically speeds up how quickly wireless providers can build and upgrade cell towers and small cell facilities by essentially tying the hands of local governments.

This bill scraps the old rules and replaces them with a federal mandate that prioritizes rapid deployment. Specifically, local governments now face brutal deadlines. If a provider submits an application for a small facility on an existing structure, the local planning board has just 60 days to approve or deny it. For a brand new, large tower, they get 150 days. Here’s the kicker: if the local government misses that deadline, even by a day, the application is automatically considered approved and the provider can start building. This provision, found in the section detailing strict deadlines, is designed to eliminate bureaucratic delays that slow down 5G rollout, meaning better service might get to you faster, but it also means your local planning board has to move at lightning speed or lose its say entirely.

The Need for Speed vs. Local Control

For the average person, this bill is a trade-off. On the one hand, it directly benefits anyone frustrated with dead zones or slow speeds. By forcing rapid approvals, the bill accelerates infrastructure deployment, which is great news for remote workers, students, and businesses that need reliable, high-speed internet. This is the bill’s clear win: faster, more robust wireless access for everyone.

However, this speed comes at a cost to local authority. While the bill says local governments can still enforce “reasonable, objective, and non-discriminatory” rules regarding structural safety and aesthetics (like making sure the tower blends in), their power to deny projects is severely limited. They can’t discriminate between providers, and they absolutely cannot pass any rule that effectively blocks the improvement of wireless service in their area. This means if a provider wants to install a new facility that meets the safety codes, the local board has very little room to say no, even if residents raise concerns about visual impact.

What Happens When the Clock Runs Out?

Imagine you’re on the local planning commission—a volunteer job, often—and you get a complex application for a new tower. If you don't issue a final, written decision supported by evidence within the 90 or 150-day window, the permit is granted automatically. This creates immense pressure on planning departments, which are often understaffed. The risk is that they might rubber-stamp applications without proper vetting to avoid the automatic approval trigger, potentially leading to facilities that haven't been adequately reviewed for structural or aesthetic compliance. The bill essentially shifts the power dynamic entirely, putting the onus on the locality to meet the provider's timeline, not the other way around.

Taking RF Emissions Off the Table

One of the most significant changes is the explicit preemption of local authority over radio frequency (RF) emissions. The bill states that local governments cannot regulate the placement or operation of these facilities based on the environmental effects of RF emissions, provided the facilities comply with existing Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules. This is a major limitation for local environmental or public health boards. If your community has concerns about RF exposure—regardless of whether those concerns are scientifically validated—this bill ensures that local government cannot use those concerns as grounds to deny a facility, as long as the provider adheres to the FCC's standards. The decision on RF safety is now entirely federal, removing local input from the equation.

Finally, the bill also tightens up fees. Any money a local government charges for reviewing these applications or using public space must be publicly disclosed, set in advance, and based only on the actual, direct, and objectively reasonable costs of processing the application. This is good news for providers, as it prevents local governments from using high fees as an indirect way to discourage construction, ensuring that the cost of deployment stays lower.