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An old law meets a new technology: traditional right-of-way access rights apply to wireless telephone technology.

Article Excerpt
Recent legal judgments are going to have a real impact on companies' abilities to place antennas in our cities and countryside. What does it all mean?

In the year 1850, Vice President Millard Fillmore replaced a deceased Zachary Taylor as President of the United States, Congress was struggling to keep the Union from self-destructing over the issue of slavery, and the nation was being wired from coast to coast for the telegraphic age.

The deployment of Samuel F. B. Morse's revolutionary new technology posed interesting questions for the young nation. Among them was what role states' rights would play in the context of the overriding national interest in facilitating a nationwide telegraph network without regard for state lines. Some states bristled at the idea that a telegraph company with a national charter could run roughshod through local streets and highways, stabbing poles and stringing lines along the way, without regard for state lines or the concerns of state sovereignty. Such states sought to exercise their power to say "no" to the telegraph companies' requests for entry, or to exact onerous fees or to impose conditions on the companies as they saw fit. Other states understood the federal interest in the deployment of a seamless telegraph network and realized they had something to gain from the installation of such networks within their own borders.

While the threat to national deployment of a telegraph system came from assertions of state sovereignty, the threat to the provision of intrastate telegraph services came from the municipalities and political subdivisions of the state. Cities and counties jealously guarded their powers in order to maintain the health, safety, and welfare of the citizens within their jurisdictional boundaries. Such powers could be wielded...