Mitchell Lazarus

Three years ago – doesn’t the time just fly? – we told you about Towerstream, a wireless Internet service provider (WISP) whose transmitters had caused interference to airport weather radars. The Federal Communications Commission proposed a fine of $202,000, apparently in keeping with its rumored policy of “jacking up the fines till we get their attention.” Towerstream has since negotiated a consent decree with the FCC that knocked the fine down to a more manageable $40,000. The company has also committed itself to a compliance monitoring program.

Case closed … we hope. Towerstream hopes so, too. Because the FCC put a spring-loaded trap into the consent decree. The $162,000 the FCC took off the original fine did not go away. It became a “suspended penalty” that Towerstream will owe if it causes the same kind of interference within three years – in addition, no doubt, to whatever separate fine the FCC will impose for the new interference. The FCC has applied these suspended penalties only a few times before, all of them in 2016. We are guessing they are now a standard feature of the FCC’s consent decree template, along with another recent change that eliminated the defendant’s chance to pay the fine – then dubbed a “voluntary contribution” – without admitting guilt. Now the fine is a “civil penalty,” the defendant has to admit the violation, and a large balance remains as an overhanging threat for years.