The 2021 amendment most boards still have not absorbed

The entry dated February 25, 2021 — 86 FR 11442 — is the one that matters here. Before it, the rule was understood as protecting receive-only equipment: the satellite dish, the television antenna. After it, the protected category expressly includes “a hub or relay antenna used to receive or transmit fixed wireless signals.”

That is a different kind of device, and it looks different. A relay antenna is often larger, mounted higher, and serving other properties as well as the owner's. A board looking at it sees commercial equipment on a roof. The rule sees a protected antenna.

What the rule does not do

It is not unlimited, and boards regularly over-read the limits in both directions.

It applies only to property within the antenna user's exclusive use or control. An owner's balcony, patio, or exclusive-use roof area — where the declaration grants that exclusivity — is inside it. Genuine common elements are not. In a North Dakota condominium, whether a given roof area is a common element or a limited common element assigned to a unit is decided by the declaration, and it is the first question to ask.

It does not override safety restrictions. Rules necessary for safety or for the preservation of a designated historic property survive, but the association must justify them.

It does not permit anything outside the covered services. The rule lists what it protects.

The burden runs against the association. This is the practical core. A board enforcing an antenna restriction is not defending a presumptively valid covenant; it is the party that has to prove the restriction is permissible.

Why this matters more in North Dakota

Fixed wireless is a primary broadband delivery method across much of the state, and in many communities it is the only realistic one. An owner who cannot mount an antenna cannot get service. That is a materially different dispute from a fight about a satellite dish where cable is available, and a board that treats it as an aesthetic question is misjudging what is at stake for the owner.

North Dakota supplies nothing of its own here. The state has no antenna statute, and the 69th Legislative Assembly considered no bill on antennas or satellite dishes at all. The Condominium Ownership Act's two topic-specific sections cover political signs and electric vehicle charging, and nothing else. Our North Dakota governing statute page covers what the state does and does not provide.

Where a board stands

Read your antenna rule against the current federal text, not against what it said when it was written. A rule drafted before 2021 almost certainly does not contemplate a transmitting relay.

Decide the exclusive-use question from the declaration. That is the boundary the rule turns on, and it is a documents question, not a practice question.

Regulate what you legitimately can, in writing. Safety-based installation standards, attachment methods and, where genuinely applicable, historic preservation. Preferences about placement are a request, not a rule. Our North Dakota architectural review page covers where committee authority runs.

Do not fine first and ask later. The burden being on the association means an enforcement action that fails is an enforcement action the association pays for. Our fining authority page covers the association's exposure.

Disclose the rule. Since August 1, 2025, N.D.C.C. § 47-10-02.3 requires the rules and regulations to be furnished in the resale packet. A buyer who needs fixed wireless will read them.

What to watch next

Watch for a North Dakota dispute over whether a shared rooftop is within an owner's exclusive use — that is the question the rule turns on and the one the declaration usually answers ambiguously. Watch, too, for further FCC activity: nothing in 2025 or 2026 touched § 1.4000, and the rule has been stable since April 2023.