AT&T, Comcast Fight Utility Pole Reform To Slow Google Fiber's Arrival In Nashville
from the get-the-hell-out-of-the-way dept
We've talked a few times about how incumbent broadband providers often use their ownership of city utility poles (or their "ownership" of entire city councils and state legislatures) to slow Google Fiber's arrival in new markets. In California and Texas, AT&T has often been accused of using the process of pole attachment approval to intentionally block or slow down the arrival of competitors. AT&T also recently sued the city of Louisville for streamlining utility pole attachment rules intended to dramatically speed up the time it takes to attach new fiber to poles.This week this fight extended into Nashville, where Comcast and AT&T are again fighting pole attachment reform. Google Fiber supports "one touch make ready" pole attachment rules, which lets a licensed, insured third party contractor move any ISP's gear on a utility pole (often a matter of inches) to install new fiber. Being incumbents with networks already deployed, Comcast, AT&T and Charter obviously have a vested interest in making sure this doesn't happen. As such, they've started loudly bitching about Google Fiber to local Nashville news outlets:
"Just because you spell your name with eight different colors doesn’t mean you can’t play by the rules that everybody else has to fucking play by,” says one operative, venting about Google’s reputation for wooing local officials in various cities into accommodating the company.These incumbents have, as a refresher, spent a generation paying for, writing and lobbying for state and local rules that make it hard or impossible to actually compete with them. That anybody would believe these companies' complaints about "fairness" is dumbfounding, yet given their political power, these arguments go much further than they should. AT&T, for example, is telling Nashville politicians they only oppose Google Fiber's reform plan because they care so much about unions:
“While we have not seen the proposed ordinance, we are concerned that a make-ready ordinance would interfere with our contractual commitment to have our skilled employees represented by the Communications Workers of America perform make-ready work on our behalf,” says AT&T Tennessee spokesperson Joe Burgan. “Beyond that, we have serious concerns with other companies being allowed to perform work on our facilities without providing us notice, which could put service reliability and public safety at risk in some circumstances. Additionally, jurisdiction to regulate pole attachments rests with the FCC, and municipalities have no authority under federal or state law to enact the ordinance being proposed here.”To be very clear, such "one touch make ready" reform rules are broadly supported as a way to speed up broadband deployment. Contrary to AT&T's claim, under most implementations of these rules, incumbent ISPs still receive forewarning about upcoming work, they just have to respond and approve (or reject, with reasons) these requests on a much shorter time scale so they can't use the system to unfair advantage. And it's not "other companies" performing the work, it's independent, licensed and insured third party contractors that have already been doing this kind of work all over the country -- often for the incumbents themselves.
These are the same companies that bitch endlessly about "burdensome regulations," yet consistently write, lobby for and pass regulations that hinder competitors from disrupting the market. In this case, AT&T's next likely step is to file a lawsuit against Nashville just as it did in Louisville, all the while pretending (despite a generation of contradictory evidence) it's just a stickler for level playing fields.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: broadband, competition, fiber, google fiber, incumbents, nashville, pole attachments
Companies: at&t, comcast, google
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I'm not sure which is better, the fact that he thinks that the number of colours on a logo make any difference to how the company operates or the fact that he thinks Google has 6 letters. Maybe he's thinking of Alphabet, but that logo has one colour, so by his reasoning they're 5 times more likely to "play by the rules" than Google. Oh, and apart from the sweary rant:
"venting about Google’s reputation for wooing local officials in various cities into accommodating the company"
Does he think that none of the other companies do this?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Erm, 8 letters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
As far as I know there is no law preventing them from doing so.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
btw, an on demand economy would be an unmitigated disaster.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Unions? No.
I wonder how much they pay in taxes for those poles...
-C
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Pitching Woo
Ahhh... I see... when its their woo its ok... but let google spend some woo money and all of a sudden it's somehow wrong.
"doesn’t mean you can’t play by the rules that everybody else has to fucking play by"
As I see it... Mr. Operative.... they are doing exactly that. Stings a little huh?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
It's sad how it takes a company with such deep pockets like Google to maybe overcome the huge and expensive political barriers to entering a new market. Shows how much money controls politics.
How is anyone without such deep pockets expected to get anything done?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Contact Comcast, AT&T and their unions and say something like the following
"You guys don't really care about the 'rules' you dirtbags. The only thing you care about is maintaining your selfishly bought monopoly."
Who are in charge of these unions, how can we contact them? Lets get pictures of them, if we happen to see them someplace we should let them know how outraged we are at them (though this doesn't mean we should stock them). If everyone does it, if everywhere they go they receive these kinds of comments about how outraged people are at them, the message will get through that no one is happy. They make our lives miserable we get to collectively make their lives miserable in return. The police can't arrest everyone everywhere that simply wishes to comment so if enough people voice their opinion and everywhere they go there are new people that know who they are and are annoyed at what they are doing then the message will get through.
Contact Comcast and AT&T lobbyists. Lobby the lobbyists. Lets get their names and put their pictures out there. Let everyone know. We can start a website, most hated lobbyists of the month.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Level playing field
They DO believe in a level playing field... just one where THEY set the level. ;)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Level playing field
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
I haven't heard them complaining. It seems to just be the companies on the pole that would compete with Google that have a problem with it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Having electric power is usually seen as a public benefit, thus they are not charged for the public utility right of way. In some areas , though, the poles are actually publicly owned. Such as where the power company is publicly owned. I believe this is the case in Austin, Texas, for example, which may be part of why Google chose to install fiber there.
I see no reason cable company I never use gets free expensive public real estate at my expense.
In most cases the cable companies pay a small pole rental fee (attachment fee) for each pole. This fee, however, is usually far, far below market value. It just lets the cable companies claim that they "pay for it".
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Either the utility companies get a free right of way, or you pay you portion of whatever they pay for it, plus accounting costs plus an element of profit, in your utility bills. So unless you use no utilities at all, charging them will cost you more money for the utilities that you do use.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
http://nespower.com/about.html
[ link to this | view in thread ]