General Communications Inc., commonly known as GCI, will have to pay a $620,500 fine for unregistered cellular towers and improper tower lighting in Western Alaska and airports near Fairbanks.
The fee comes after a settlement Tuesday, with the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC.
An investigation by the FCC found that GCI had 118 unregistered cellular communications facilities didn’t properly light three of them, making the towers noncompliant with flight safety regulations. Any tower above 200 feet or potentially interfering with an airport’s flight path, must register with the FCC and comply with aviation standards.
GCI spokesman David Morris says since 2008, GCI has acquired four telephone companies, including Alaska Communications.
“As a result of that acquisition, we started to investigate the towers’ compliance and we found another of them were out of compliance (and) had mostly to do with registering the tower properly and doing some environmental checks,” said Morris.
Morris says GCI and the FCC developed a three-year plan to bring all GCI-owned towers in compliance with FCC regulations.
“What we went and did was an exhaustive inventory of how those towers were represented in the area,” said Morris. “Over the next few years we’ll have to do regular reporting back to the FCC for the compliance document.”
Morris says GCI has about 800 structures in Alaska, says a GCI certifying official will be checking to make sure everything is kept up to code and following state and federal regulations.
The FCC does conduct field checks to make sure cell towers following the rules. The commission announced in July that its Anchorage field office along with 10 other offices across the country will close. This means that in-person regulators will come from out-of-state.
Although there isn’t an exact timeline in place, once the Anchorage office closes, the nearest will be in Portland.
