Pole Attachment Rules Critical to Broadband Deployment, Carriers Say

"Reasonable rates, terms, and conditions for pole attachments are key to broadband deployment in rural areas, especially because the rise of smart grid applications will encourage some utilities to impose unreasonable rates, terms, and conditions for access to their poles,” said NTCA, OPASTCO, the Western Telecommunications Alliance and the Eastern Rural Telecom Association. “Utilities are revamping portions of the electric grid, their internal usage of telecommunications facilities, and deploying fiber optics in order to bring broadband to some communities through smart-grid electric usage applications. These utilities are in a position to stifle broadband services competition by barricading their poles through unreasonable and unjustified rates, terms, and conditions."

The four small associations said 20 states and the District of Columbia have certified to the FCC that they have regulations to determine the rates, terms, and conditions for pole attachments. “Small rural ILECs operating in states that have not certified their control over pole attachments, such as Arizona and North Carolina, have experienced difficulty in negotiating pole access on just and reasonable terms and find that they lack an express procedural remedy for unjust and unreasonable pole attachment rates, terms, and conditions,” they said. The groups asked the FCC to adopt the lowest telecom rate for broadband connections, create a mechanism to resolve disputes with utilities and impose a make-ready timetable on pole owners. “Unreasonable and unjust rates for pole attachments are not only expensive to small rural ILECs, but they are also burdensome when passed on to the rural consumers the companies serve,” the groups said. “The proposed make-ready time-line is appropriate and will help speed broadband deployment by providing more predictability in the pole attachment process."

CTIA supported a uniform rate for pole attachments and said a proposed 148-day deadline for making poles ready for attachment should be changed for wireless, to impose still-tighter deadlines for distributed antenna system buildout “inherently a smaller-scale project than wireline build-out.” The association added, “Surely, if 90 days is a presumptively reasonable time period for a wireless siting collocation application, then a make-ready timeline for wireless attachments can be shorter than the 148-day timeline proposed by the Commission.”

In 2008 alone, U.S. wireless invested more than $25 billion in equipment and infrastructure, CTIA said. “As America’s appetite for wireless broadband has produced demand for more access to more wireless spectrum in more locations across the country, wireless providers are moving as fast as they can to meet the market’s needs. Even as wireless providers work diligently to expand their networks, they continue to run up against an infrastructure logjam -- time and again, wireless providers’ make-ready work is unreasonably impeded and delayed by pole owners resistant to wireless attachments on their poles.”

The Edison Electric Institute and the Utilities Telecom Council said the Communications Act doesn’t allow the FCC to impose deadlines on electric utilities to act on attachment requests. “Congress did not provide the FCC with sweeping authority to regulate the facilities of electric utilities or to impose overly broad requirements on the entire electric industry,” the group said. “The FCC suggests it has authority to require an electric utility to comply with specific timelines for completion of make-ready and to establish, update, and maintain a database of all of its assets that could potentially be subject to an access request. … The FCC lacks jurisdiction to implement these proposals because the FCC cannot regulate the conduct of electric utilities that is either prior to or otherwise outside the scope of a complaint case."

Milwaukee-based We Energies said it’s “unreasonable” to expect electric utilities to handle the needs of a communications project. “In just June and July of 2010, We Energies has dealt with eight damage causing storms which have caused over 250,000 customer interruptions. … These customers included hospitals, schools, nursing homes, municipal water and sewer systems and many individual residences that rely on electricity for air conditioning, and in some cases life saving medical equipment. In these situations normal operations are put on hold and all possible We Energies resources are directed at restoring service."

Don’t impose onerous pole-attachment rules on electric utilities, said the American Public Power Association, which represents public power companies. “Consistent with congressional intent, public power utilities should have the flexibility to develop rate methodologies based on local needs,” the association said. “Nor should the Commission undertake one-size-fits-all attachment practices and procedures that, in the name of expediency, could compromise the safety and reliability of critical electric facilities.”

Puget Sound Energy said the FCC should not impose firm deadlines on utilities. Companies like PSE have little leverage over the attacher to meet specific timelines. “While PSE has instituted processes that permit its crews, where practical, to transfer and/or relocate existing communications attachments, a significant percentage of existing attachments require trained telecommunications workers to move given the complexity of the attached equipment and the necessity to maintain customer service,” the company said, suggesting that the clock should stop when an existing attacher causes a delay. “The proposed timeline also fails to account for the need of utilities to conduct engineering analyses,” PSE said. “While PSE’s pole attachment agreements make applicants responsible for engineering analyses, experience has shown that a utility cannot rely on a proposed attaching entity to perform the necessary engineering design analysis to account for the impact of adding load to existing structures.”