Comments on Pole Attachments Call for Rate Parity April 24th, 2008
Kevin Rupy

Ever looked at the telephone poles that run down your street or alley?  To the untrained eye it may just look like a jumble of cables, wires, and boxes strapped onto a utility pole.  But it actually reflects the intense - and growing - competition between the cable, telephone, and CLEC companies who deliver bundled voice, video and broadband services to consumers.

Yet despite delivering nearly identical bundled services, cable, telephone and CLEC providers each pay vastly different rates to the pole owners, usually the local electric company. For example, ILEC’s can pay more than 1,400% more for pole attachments than their cable counterparts; the disparity between ILEC and CLEC rates is also high, in some instances near 900%.

But that disparity is coming under increasing scrutiny.  The FCC has initiated a rulemaking proceeding to determine whether broadband attachments by all classes of providers should be subject to one uniform rate.  From a policy perspective, this makes sense.  Why should providers of fundamentally identical services attaching fundamentally similar devices to the poles be charged remarkably different rates?The current rate disparity between ILECs, CLECs, and cable companies puts ILECs at a substantial competitive disadvantage with regard to the prices they can offer consumers.  A broad internal survey of USTelecom members, which we cited in our initial comments in the pole attachment proceeding, highlighted the significant, consistent and widespread disparity in rates charged to various providers.

Yesterday USTelecom filed reply comments in the FCC’s ongoing proceeding on pole attachments, calling for parity in rates among the providers of similar services; as the first round of comments in the proceeding showed, there’s widespread support for rate parity.  Specifically, we write:

The initial comments in this docket clearly demonstrate widespread enthusiasm and support among diverse groups for a uniform, reasonable rate formula for broadband attachments. Representatives from [ILECs], cable providers, wireless providers, [CLECs] and utilities expressed their support for such an approach.

We also noted in the comments that the FCC has ample statutory authority to establish a rate formula to cover broadband attachments for all manner of providers, including ILECs; we certainly hope that the Commission acts on that authority to level the playing field between broadband providers, regardless of platform.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 3:45 pm and is filed under Filings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.