There was a brief moment of hope that a deal between US mobile operators and the city of San Jose, regarding access to sites for small cells, would provide a template for the whole nation. That would have helped turn the FCC’s dream of a uniform national process for densification into workable reality, and suggested a pragmatic solution to the main barrier to large-scale deployment of outdoor small cells – affordable access to sites and backhaul. But days after Verizon and AT&T celebrated the San Jose agreement, and just ahead of new legislation being presented to Congress, the battles have broken out again, threatening to derail an essential element of the USA’s progress to 5G. Outdoor small cells have been…