Pole Attachment Surge Not Temporary, Connecticut Regulator Told
Pole riders sought revamped Connecticut pole attachment rules to deal with a rush of attachment applications. The state Public Utility Regulatory Authority (PURA) asked for feedback by Wednesday on a United Illuminating proposal to revise PURA's temporary attachment guidelines, but CenturyLink and the New England Cable and Telecommunications Association (NECTA) suggested in comments in docket 19-01-52 that the pole owner’s plan doesn’t address the full problem. Meanwhile, Connecticut legislators’ failure to pass a municipal broadband bill sent debate over a pole space reserved for municipal use back to court.
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United Illuminating wants to erase a temporary state guideline requiring any violation on an existing structure "be corrected before other work is done on the structure.” Eliminating that "will allow applicants to apply for temporary attachments if the Single Pole Administrator determines, based on high application volumes, that the Authority’s mandated forty-five day time frame to complete a survey and/or forty-five day time frame to complete make ready work cannot be met," the pole owner said. The change “will provide immediate relief to the industry as pole owners seek to address the high volume of utility pole applications and applicants seek swift access to the poles.”
“The current circumstance is not just a temporary surge for which temporary guidelines are the appropriate method of resolution,” countered NECTA in Wednesday comments. “The number of future pole attachment applications is only expected to increase as a result of continued innovation and technological advances.” Converting most “applications seeking permanent attachment into a temporary process doesn't resolve the underlying problems created by a lack of appropriate pole owner resources,” the cable group said. “It allows the exception (i.e., temporary attachments) to become the rule, thereby circumventing the process set forth in the pole attachment agreements between pole owners and attachers.”
There could be “unintended consequences,” such as doubling “the amount of survey and make-ready work necessary to complete a permanent attachment,” the regional cable association warned. “The process for temporary attachments should not provide a competitive benefit to temporary attachment applications by allowing them to ‘jump the line’ and proceed in advance of pending requests for permanent attachments.” It “should be open, transparent and fair to all stakeholders,” NECTA said.
PURA should expand its temporary attachment guidelines into comprehensive pole attachment rules, commented CenturyLink, an attacher in Connecticut and pole owner in other states. They should include one-touch, make-ready rules like the FCC’s, and “self-help provisions allowing new attachers to hire and use contractors to conduct surveys and complete make-ready work,” it said. The telco concurred with United Illuminating’s proposed revisions but said even with those edits, the guidelines “fail to address the issues necessary to provide attachers with predictable, timely and cost-effective access to poles.”
The FCC’s OTMR rules "strike a balance between pole owners' concerns regarding the safety and integrity of the poles and the pole [attachers] who are trying to speed deployment of broadband by building out network which requires attachments to poles,” CenturyLink said. Vermont and other states "that regulate pole attachments are also looking at ways to remove the burden from pole owners and to streamline the attachment process to facilitate additional broadband network deployment.”
Municipal Gain
Attention returned to a Connecticut court after a state bill to clarify that local governments may use a reserved space on poles called the “municipal gain” for municipal broadband stalled in the Senate. SB-846 got wide support last month in the Joint Finance Committee, but NECTA and Frontier Communications opposed the measure (see 1905150045).
The Connecticut Superior Court set oral argument for Aug. 14 on local governments’ and the Connecticut Office of Consumer Counsel’s appeal of a PURA decision that agreed with telecom companies interpreting the municipal gain to exclude municipal broadband, said the court’s website. The court resumed the case after pausing to see what would happen with the bill and its possible impact on the case if the legislation became law.
Passing the state bill would have been a quicker fix than waiting for the court to decide, said a Connecticut Conference of Municipalities spokesperson. How long it will take the court to resolve the matter is unknown, he said: “There is no clear path at this point for municipal broadband on the municipal gain.”