Public Power Utilities Slam BDAC Process, Proposals
The American Public Power Association decried “process and outcomes” of the FCC Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, in a letter to BDAC Chair Elizabeth Bowles posted Wednesday in docket 17-83. BDAC has no representative for public power utilities, and it shows,…
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APPA said. “While BDAC purports to be a representative body, its composition is so overwhelmingly comprised of private industry representatives that there can be no real suggestion that the ‘model’ codes developed by BDAC are consensus documents that reflect the input and views of all stakeholders.” The committee also has taken heat for having few local representatives (see 1805020059). Pole attachment recommendations in the draft model codes “would have significant detrimental operational and financial impacts on utility operations,” the association said. “These measures would compromise the safety and reliability of electric distribution infrastructure and would subsidize the private communications industry at the expense of public power utility customers.” The draft municipal code “arbitrarily and capriciously seeks to impose a single set of pole attachment regulations on all public power utilities in clear contravention of … Section 224 of the Communications Act,” it said. APPA opposed creating a centralized register of network support infrastructure in each state as unnecessary and burdensome. A state code proposal to require public entities including power utilities to make publicly owned dark fiber available to private entities at cost-based rates is “one-sided and overly intrusive,” it said. An FCC official noted that National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jim Matheson is a BDAC member on the State Model Code and Competitive Access to Broadband Infrastructure working group.