Opinion ID: 200247
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Significant Gap Formulation

Text: 37 Courts have provided a judicial gloss on the effective prohibition language of the statute in order to determine whether a coverage problem exists at all. We have concluded that a town's refusal to permit a tower that is needed to fill a significant [geographic] gap in service, where no service at all is offered in the gap, would violate the effective prohibition clause. See Nat'l Tower, 297 F.3d at 20; accord Willoth, 176 F.3d at 643; APT Pittsburgh Ltd. P'ship, 196 F.3d at 480. The context in which a question arises is important. In National Tower, where this circuit adopted and employed a significant gap analysis, it was undisputed that no carrier provided coverage in the geographic gap area and that the gap affected the ability of a large number of users to connect or maintain a connection, id. at 17-18. The issue addressed in National Tower by the significant gap formulation, then, had to do with when a purported geographic gap, served by no carrier, is large enough in terms of physical size and number of users affected to amount to an effective prohibition, rather than being a mere, and statutorily permissible, dead spot. Federal regulations contemplate that areas enjoying adequate coverage will still include spots without reliable service. See 360 Degrees Communications Co., 211 F.3d at 87; 47 C.F.R. § 22.911(b) (2001); see also id. § 22.99 (defining dead spots as [s]mall areas within a service area where the field strength is lower than the minimum level for reliable service). 38 Like many legal concepts, the significant gap language used in one context is now being used by the parties to address a qualitatively different and much more complex set of problems. The parties use the phrase to frame arguments about whether an effective prohibition can exist in a geographic area where a carrier already provides some service. The ultimate question of course remains whether a given decision, ordinance, or policy amounts to an effective prohibition on the delivery of wireless services. Inquiries into the existence and type of gap are merely helpful analytic tools toward that end. 11 39