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Frontier Teams With AT&T To Block Google Fiber Access To Utility Poles (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Ars Technica: Frontier submitted a court filing last week supporting ATT's efforts to sue local governments in Louisville and Jefferson County, Kentucky to stop a new ordinance designed to give Google Fiber and similar companies access to utility poles. They're concerned the ordinances will spread to other states. Frontier's filing said, "the issues raised by the case may have important implications for Frontier's business and may impact the development of law in jurisdictions throughout the country where Frontier operates." The ordinance in Louisville lets companies like Google Fiber install wires even if ATT doesn't respond to requests or rejects requests to attach lines. Companies don't have to notify ATT when they want to move ATT's wires to make room for their own wires, assuming the work won't cause customer outages. ATT claims that the ordinance lets competitors "seize ATT's property." Frontier is urging the court to consider the nationwide implications of upholding Louisville's ordinance, saying Louisville's rule "is unprecedented" because "it drastically expands the rights of third parties to use privately owned utility poles, giving non-owners unfettered access to [a] utility's property without the [...] utility in some cases even having knowledge that such third-party intrusion on its facilities is occurring." Frontier said companies should be required to negotiation access with the owners if they didn't pay to install the utility poles. They urged the court to deny Louisville Metro's motion to dismiss ATT's complaint.
In most districts I've seen the utility companies don't pay any kind of excise tax or ownership tax on "their" poles. Since they're already getting special treatment as these poles are seen as supporting a public utility, they shouldn't be too surprised to see some strings getting attached to this special treatment.
Require the "owning" company to move connections, etc., in a reasonable amount of time after being notified. If the connections aren't moved within the legally mandated time, then "ownership" of the pole is transferred to the requesting company. That would prevent the "we don't have time" or "we're going to ignore you" or the other kinds of slimy activities that the owning company would perform in order to handicap their competitor.
The same type of thing is happening in San Jose. Comcast and AT&T are working hard to keep Google Fiber out of the Bay Area in California, by denying access to utility poles. I called the Northern California Joint Pole Association (NCJPA) myself to ask them some questions, and they were somewhat flummoxed on the phone. I guess it never occurred to them that helping monopolists protect their turf might tick off the local population.
Funny, I just read Comcast has the opposite complaint. A local power utility was about to rip down Comcast's lines for failing to pay their pole attachment fees, "which would have killed service for about 7,000 Comcast customers."
âoeUnfortunately, the utility has been unwilling to compromise and has billed Comcast for arbitrary pole rates that are nearly three times the national average,â said Horwitz. Comcast claimed [the power company is] using their position as a monopoly to gouge customers with high rates.
If the cognitive dissonance of that last quote doesn't make your head explode, it's a good read:
http://stopthecap.com/2016/06/...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
If they claim they own the utility poles, then they might own property taxes to the municipalities. Land owners also might demand rent for all the lines over private property. The city could also charge them rent/fee for using public easements and public rights of way.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
True story: a neighbor's house is set so far back from the road that he has two of his own poles on his property to bring power/telephone to his house.
Cable company wanted to 'tighten up' a circuitous branch on a dead end street behind his place (ultimately a shorter path for their signal to the end of the street rather than its current long-way-around).
They called him, asked for right-of-way, he said "sure, a free subscription will be your rent for as long as the cable is there", they weren't cool; "no deal". "Okay, fine, b'bye".
Days later they showed up, unannounced, started working, told wife to "mind her business" when questioned, wife called him, called cops, called lawyer, called local zoning enforcement, everybody got there, words ensued.
"he has proven he owns the poles, you're trespassing since they asked you to leave their property and you haven't, you proved previous knowledge of this private property when you first asked them for a right of way, LEAVE NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE" says Captain Cop.
Cable lawyers called, "let's be reasonable", "mutual understanding", "thank you but we said no", "you can't impede a public utility", court.
Judge & Bench Decision: "it's their property and their no means no", cable to pay their court costs and lawyer AND trespassing fines AND emotional distress ("mind her business").
Would have been cheaper to swallow one installation, generate goodwill, and have their system improved by the shortcut.