Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin last week said the agency will re-examine the pole-attachment regulatory regime as part of a broader, ongoing effort to promote the deployment of broadband communications, a policy direction that will give the tower and cellphone sectors the chance to argue for changes to a policy they say discriminates against them.
“Establishing parity between all providers of broadband services will help to promote competition between providers of broadband services,” the FCC stated in its pole-attachment plan late last year. “The commission will continue to look for ways to remove barriers to competition across all platforms and with respect to all services that we regulate. The public interest demands that all Americans reap the benefits of competition.” The pole-attachment rulemaking is expected to attract significant industry comment after its publication in the Federal Register.
Moving toward a single rate
Martin told reporters the GOP – led FCC wants to build on prior rulings that classified wireless broadband and other high-speed Internet services provided over different communications platforms as information services, which effectively shields such offerings from cumbersome common carrier regulations. Martin said he also wants to improve the way the government measures broadband penetration and how it defines broadband access, initiatives prompted in part by Democrats who controlled Congress. Martin remains a target for Democrats due to President Bush’s unfulfilled goal of achieving universal, affordable broadband access by 2007. Meantime, greater broadband deployment has been flagged in policy proposals of some presidential candidates in advance of the November election.
“I hope the commission will use this opportunity to improve the process to improve this [pole attachment] process,” said Michael Fitch, president of wireless infrastructure association PCIA. Fitch said PCIA is anxious to get its views on the record in the FCC matter.
CTIA, which represents mobile-phone carriers and has intervened in a pole-attachment proceeding before the New York Public Service Commission, is also expected to be a major voice in the federal pole-attachment rulemaking.
The FCC said wireless carriers want the agency to explicitly declare that the telecom rate formula applies to the attachment of wireless devices.
The commission appears headed down that path as a policy matter.
In the text of its proposal, the FCC tentatively concluded “that all attachments used for broadband Internet access service should be subject to a single rate, regardless of the platform over which those services are provided, and that that rate, for reasons discussed herein, should be greater than the current cable rate, yet no greater than the telecommunications rate.”
Quirky questions, messy debate
However, implementation of such a policy could be tricky. For example, the agency asked that if wireless carriers are allowed to connect antennas to pole tops, should pole owners receive a higher rate of compensation, since unlike lateral space, there’s only one pole top? It is a seemingly quirky – yet abundantly germane – question, but precisely the kind of question that that could turn pole attachments into a messy, lengthy debate in 2008.
