Poles and Railroads: Breaking Down Barriers to Broadband Deployment
A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to attend the premiere screening of When Wire Was King: The Transformation of Telecommunications, a fascinating and brilliantly constructed documentary about the key players and technologies that shaped our telecommunications landscape over the course of the last century. The film is a remarkable achievement. Our colleague at Echostar, Jennifer Manner, who directed and produced When Wire Was King, deserves considerable praise for how well the film uses historical footage and compelling interviews with those who were there to tell the story of how a few brave policymakers were able to crack the monopolistic grip of incumbents and bring competition to the voice and broadcast television markets. What truly stood out to me was the incorporation of archival images — everything from classic long-distance commercials (“so clear you can hear a pin drop”) to footage of telephone company linemen erecting utility poles and attaching telephone equipment. Seeing how our nation’s telecommunications networks were built was a good reminder that, sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Despite all the hard work that has gone into building out networks across the nation, we are far from done as every broadband technology relies on fiber, and many areas still lack access to fiber connectivity. As the FCC recently discussed in its Broadband Marketplace Report, consumers need more competitive options for their home broadband as most only have one high-speed offering, if at all.
However, fiber providers are struggling to deploy quickly and affordably. They are not able to attain timely access to investor-owned utility poles at reasonable costs. The same holds true for deploying across and along railroad tracks — a necessary requirement for most fiber builds. Addressing these challenges, particularly on the cusp of a once-in-a-generation federal investment of tens of billions of dollars, is critical to ensuring that we can finally bring the power of high-speed broadband and competition to everyone.
With respect to accessing poles to string fiber, large utilities repeatedly refuse to replace or bear financial responsibility for non-compliant poles, delay the make-ready process, or use self-imposed safety standards that exceed national standards in order to charge competitors the full cost of an upgraded pole replacement. These additional barriers to deployment slow down the process, increase costs, and often prevent providers from reaching underserved and unserved communities and offering customers faster, more affordable options.
We need targeted reforms to the nation’s pole attachment and replacement rules that provide a fair and equitable allocation of replacement costs between pole owners and new attachers. They must adjust the way costs are allocated between utilities and providers and ensure that new federal funding goes towards new infrastructure as opposed to unreasonable and costly deployment fees. The good news is that the FCC has a pending proceeding to address these challenges. INCOMPAS supports the FCC moving quickly to modify its rules to fairly allocate replacement costs and expedite disputes between pole owners and new network builders.
Railroad permitting approvals and costs also remain acute challenges for our members. The railroads are steadfast in charging excessive rates for access to their rights-of-way that they manage or control and our members are experiencing significant delays awaiting permitting approvals. Thankfully, some states are recognizing this problem and are capping permitting fees and setting timeframes for permit approvals.
Solving the poles and railroads issues are key to successfully achieving our goal of Internet for All. We will continue to work with Congress and the Biden Administration to develop new policy in the 118th Congress to address the delays and eliminate unreasonable costs.
What’s exciting is that we are on the cusp of greater connectivity than ever before with public and private sector investment in broadband deployment, and if we can truly break down these barriers we can meet the goals of connecting everyone to high-speed internet.
