Attachments, Workforce Issues Affect Telecom, NARUC Told

LOUISVILLE -- The telco industry and its stakeholders are affected by a workforce crunch and by pole attachment difficulties that make it harder to spread fast broadband around the U.S., a meeting of state regulators was told. So the next time the Telecom Committee gathers at a NARUC meeting, discussion could include pole attachment issues, industry stakeholders and state commissioners requested at the association's ongoing meeting. Speaking Monday about possible future topics for the committee, such as with a panel, industry representatives brought up barriers to telcos using utility poles to attach gear to deliver broadband. Attachments and workforce issues are also getting attention within states, commissioners told us.

"We are running into various new challenges" in states on pole attachments, including such issues as pole replacements, said NCTA Vice President-External and State Affairs Rick Cimerman from the audience as the committee briefly met (see Notebook below). He also mentioned "lack of trained workforce" as another problem. NCTA members face "new deployment challenges particularly with the influx of money and new" buildouts of broadband access, Cimerman emailed later. "Challenges include attachment replacement and the speed of makeready and permitting as well as permitting for municipal rights of way and workforce challenges."

Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley (D), whose term as NARUC president ended about a year ago, "would just like to keep that on the table as a panel. Everyone in the industry … is seeing" this workforce challenge, he said. Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable Commissioner Karen Charles Peterson recounted recently having had a conversation with a seatmate on an airplane about such workforce shortages. "I agree wholeheartedly with both of you," she responded to Presley and Cimerman. Charles Peterson later noted this may be one of the last NARUC meetings where she heads the Telecom Committee. Such a change may occur in January, when Peterson's three-year term ends, a NARUC spokesperson said.

Incompas General Counsel Angie Kronenberg raised concerns about railroads and pole attachments. She offered to work with other associations to put together a few topics for such a panel, speaking from the audience. Committee "members seemed interested in the topic" of pole attachments, "so I'm hopeful that the Winter meeting in D.C. we will see a focus on that issue," Kronenberg emailed us. She recounted also inviting NTIA to discuss broadband infrastructure implementation efforts.

The American Association of Railroads and Utilities Technology Council didn't comment.

Workforce

Indiana Utility Regulatory Commissioner Sarah Freeman raised another possible topic for the next NARUC, which meets Feb. 13-16 at the Renaissance Washington hotel: workforce and diversity.

Given "how lightly regulated telecom is across the country," state commissions may lack complete information about what telcos are doing on the issue, Freeman suggested, citing an interview she had just done on diversity. It may be worthwhile to find out "what is being done across the country," she added. "Since we don’t have that visibility that we might have with the more regulated utilities."

In Connecticut and Nebraska, regulators said in interviews, stakeholders are grappling with pole attachments. "That’s been quite the discussion within our state legislature," said Nebraska Public Service Commissioner Tim Schram (R). "I think nearly every state is dealing with this now." The question is how can pole owners be made whole for costs of sharing poles with telecoms while also not making a profit on such fees, he noted.

There's an overall crunch in companies attracting employees in Nebraska, given its low unemployment, Schram noted. It was 2% in September, the lowest in the U.S., versus 4.6% nationally for October. "All we pretty much hear from the industry is they’re having issues, too, especially in trying to deploy broadband, of hiring technicians," Schram said. In "Nebraska, across the board, it is definitely an employees’ market right now, to get a job."

The Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority has devised a way to help streamline the 5G pole attachment process, said Commissioner Michael Caron, the assigned PURA member for some such action. Each such application used to have its own docket, and now each company has a docket into which all new requests go, he said: "We’ve done hundreds of them." And there are framework agreements for pole attachments that PURA helps codify in specific cases, Caron said. "We made a lot of headway on the backlog" of some requests, he added. "We’re not waiting for the grand bargain" on all pole issues, the commissioner said. "We are going to chop this up and piecemeal it as best we can."

NARUC Notebook

The Telecom Committee quickly and unanimously OK'd a resolution encouraging stakeholders to work with utilities on broadband deployment and electricity grid security, as some had expected (see our earlier report here). There was little discussion about the draft at the association's meeting when commissioners who focus on telecom gathered Monday for their own business get-together. The item is "TC-1 Resolution Supporting Energy Company Communications Infrastructure for Broadband Expansion" (starting on page 7 here). There were no amendments, said attendees including NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay, speaking with us afterward. This was also the only telecom resolution at the meeting. The thrust of the draft, which all NARUC members will vote on, is that private broadband networks built for grid modernization could help provide "'middle mile' connectivity" that ISPs could piggyback on to provide broadband connections. It said this could "reduce the cost of bringing broadband internet access to unserved or underserved communities."

Such collaboration between utilities and ISPs could help provide broadband to areas where it's not profitable for ISPs to serve with fast speeds or sometimes with any internet connection, noted a Connecticut commissioner. There are such "pockets" of small numbers of people in his state, said PURA's Caron in an interview. "Everybody’s got to work [together] to get their one piece of the pie, they’ve got to work on baking the pie" overall and not just focus on their own slice, he said of such collaboration. "There are some things the private sector just can’t do or won’t do because of the economics" when it comes to broadband, and government can also have a role there, Caron said. He called broadband perhaps "the most critical element" to provide opportunity other than having a "decent education."

NARUC members elected Judy Jagdmann Monday as president. The Virginia Corporation Commission judge replaces Idaho Public Utilities Commissioner Paul Kjellander. Connecticut PURA Commissioner Caron replaces her as first vice president. NARUC elected North Dakota Public Service Commission Chair Julie Fedorchak as second vice president, replacing Caron.