Wireless Accuses Utilities of Curbing Broadband Explosion
Wireless groups are urging the FCC to reduce the time it takes to get attachments on utility poles, but utility interests say their opponents are threatening public safety. In the most recent round of lobbying, 33 executives and lawyers representing 16 power companies met with the FCC staff, according to an ex parte notice published on the commission’s website Friday in docket 09-51.
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The utilities’ officials represented Duke Energy, Xcel Energy, Edison International, Pepco and other companies, their ex parte said. They “reminded the FCC that the current pole attachments system has worked well without extensive government oversight” to help get broadband service to 95 percent of Americans. Power companies “have done a great deal already to promote broadband,” but “the process is complex and dangerous and can’t simply follow a cookie-cutter approach,” the ex parte said. The power company officials said: “Everyone involved, including communications companies and the public, need to be assured that careful due diligence has been applied to all the safety and operational factors involved in the process. And because it is so complicated, it is not a process that lends itself to narrow government mandates. It is also not a process that can be handed off to contractors under the control of communications companies.” The Utilities Telecom Council had its own meetings with FCC staff last week.
Pole attachments and related infrastructure questions are among the commission’s top priorities this year, an FCC official said last week (CD Feb 25 p8). The commission is expected to vote on a pole attachments order at its April meeting.
Long delays and blanket denials based on the “alleged ‘uniqueness'” of wireless attachments threatens to undermine the wireless broadband revolution, CTIA said in an ex parte presentation posted online Friday. There “may be some differences” between wireline and wireless attachments, but the two “do not require materially different treatment,” the association said.
The FCC should impose “a shorter timeline for wireless make-ready” and set uniform, cost-based rates for attachments, CTIA said. “The 2009 ’shot clock’ Declaratory Ruling sets a presumptively reasonable timeframe for processing collocation and non-collocation tower siting applications,” the group said. “If 90 days is a presumptively reasonable time period for a wireless siting collocation application, then a make-ready timeline for wireless attachments can be shorter than the 148-day timeline proposed by the commission."
The Distributed Antenna Systems Forum said in a separate ex parte notice posted Thursday that “any denial must serve as the basis for a negotiation on standards and terms for wireless attachment.” The forum said it’s “confident that through reference to the NESC and reasonable negotiations, utility pole owners can address any legitimate concerns regarding safety or reliability.”
It said that make-ready mandates “would threaten safety and reliability.'"