Slashdot Mirror
Comcast Sues Nashville To Halt Rules That Give Google Fiber Faster Access To Utility Poles (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast yesterday sued the Nashville metro government and mayor to stop a new ordinance designed to give Google Fiber faster access to utility poles. Comcast's complaint in U.S. District Court in Nashville (full text) is similar to one already filed by AT&T last month. Both ISPs are trying to invalidate a One Touch Make Ready ordinance that lets new ISPs make all of the necessary wire adjustments on utility poles themselves instead of having to wait for incumbent providers like AT&T and Comcast to send work crews to move their own wires. The ordinance was passed largely to benefit Google Fiber, which is offering service in Nashville but says that it hasn't been able to deploy faster because it is waiting to get access to thousands of poles. Nearly all the Nashville utility poles are owned either by the municipal Nashville Electric Service or AT&T. Because Comcast has wires on many of the poles, it has some control over how quickly Google Fiber can expand its network. When Google Fiber wants to attach wires to a new pole, it needs to wait for ISPs like Comcast to move their wires to make room for Google Fiber's. The Nashville One Touch Make Ready ordinance "permits third parties to move, alter, or rearrange components of Comcast's communications network attached to utility poles without Comcast's consent, authorization, or oversight, and with far less notice than is required by federal law and by an existing Comcast contract with Metro Nashville," Comcast's complaint said. Comcast asked the court to declare the ordinance invalid and permanently enjoin Nashville from enforcing it. The pre-existing Make Ready process "seek[s] to ensure that all providers can share available pole space cooperatively and safely, without interfering with or damaging any provider's equipment or services," Comcast said. The new procedures mandated by Nashville "are so intrusive that, tellingly, Metro Nashville has wholly exempted its own utility pole attachments from the Ordinance's coverage." Even though Google Fiber announced yesterday that it will pause operations and cut 9% of its staff, the ISP said it would continue operations in Nashville.
Nashville Electric Service is a fascinating entity. It is technically owned by the Metro Nashville, which is the merger of old Nashville city proper and Davidson County, yet it serves areas outside Nashville. For example, I was on NES despite living in an adjacent county when I lived in the area. I did not know at the time it was owned by the city, with a board appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the metro board (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_Electric_Service). That makes a lot of sense in this context, since the city then technically "owns" all the NES poles in the city as well. The status of AT&T (previously BellSouth, previously AT&T) poles would be debatable, since utility poles are somewhat...odd...assets. They can be owned by the locality outright, owned by the utility outright, owned by the locality but leased by the utility, etc... I'm curious to see how this plays out for the legal aspects, far more than because it involves Google Fiber.
Funny, Comcast never seemed to be particularly concerned about their service being interrupted before Google Fiber arrived in Nashville.
A year ago, my Comcast service would often drop out dozens of times a day (confirmed by my modem logs). Calls to Comcast service got me nowhere. You know what finally fixed my Comcast service? When Comcast ran brand-new cable throughout my neighborhood while in mortal fear of Google Fiber.
Comcast doesn't care if their service works or not. They certainly never seemed to care in the past 10 years, at least until Google Fiber came to Nashville. I never got a dime of reimbursement for all the times my Internet or cable TV quit working. And now they moan and groan about possible interruptions due to Google Fiber installing their own equipment? Laughable.
But here's the most important point: Nashville residents simply DO NOT CARE about the lawsuits. They expected legal action, and they still overwhelmingly told the Metro Council that they wanted Google Fiber. The Metro Council has gotten the message loud and clear, and the city is not going to back down.
Damage to Comcast's lines is already covered by applicable law. This is not made explicit in this new ordinance, but because the ordinance requires the attacher to both post a bond, and to indemnify (protect from legal repercussions for damages) the pole owner, it's clearly something obvious to the lawyers who wrote it.
This law also requires notification be sent to anyone whose lines are moved, and places liability for certain costs on the one doing the moving - cost for the existing user to perform inspections, and cover the costs for any mistakes made that bring it out of spec with the pole owner. And the pole owners may require approval of the contractors who actually perform the work.
Also, the law does require that the new line owner gets permission from the pole owner, and that any work that could reasonably cause a service outage must notify the existing line owners, and must coordinate with them if they choose to do so (within a certain timeframe - if Comcast sits around for a month after being told of outage-causing work, the work may proceed without them).