Crown Castle Gives Examples of Prohibitive Pole-Owner Policies
Some utility pole owners in Florida, Maryland and Texas are violating Section 224 of the Communications Act, Crown Castle said in a Thursday filing in FCC docket 19-250. The tower company urged the FCC to clarify that blanket prohibitions on…
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specific types of attachments or attachments to specific areas of a pole and negotiated pole-attachment agreement terms that conflict with FCC rules violate Section 224. “Major utilities -- in populous states like Texas and Florida, for instance -- simply ban all third-party attachments in the unusable space and will not entertain discussions for an exception,” said Crown Castle. The company won an exception in North Carolina but only after “many months” of talks with the utility and the relevant city, it said. “A Florida utility set up an unpassable ‘test’ for prospective antenna attachment: the utility will only permit pole-top antenna attachment if the proposed equipment will have no effect on the capacity of the pole; however, any piece of equipment placed on a pole -- no matter how small -- will affect a pole’s capacity, even if the impact is only negligible.” Meanwhile, Crown Castle has been struggling for two years to get authorization from a utility in “a large metropolitan area in Maryland,” it said. “Because the facility involves an antenna, the local jurisdiction is requiring approval and will not issue the needed approval until the utility issues its construction standard, which it has not done.”