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AT&T and Comcast Finalize Court Victory Over Nashville and Google Fiber (arstechnica.com)
"AT&T and Comcast have solidified a court victory over the metro government in Nashville, Tennessee, nullifying a rule that was meant to help Google Fiber compete against the incumbent broadband providers," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The case involved Nashville's "One Touch Make Ready" ordinance that was supposed to give Google Fiber and other new ISPs faster access to utility poles. The ordinance let a single company make all of the necessary wire adjustments on utility poles itself instead of having to wait for incumbent providers like AT&T and Comcast to send work crews to move their own wires. But AT&T and Comcast sued the metro government to eliminate the rule and won a preliminary victory in November when a U.S. District Court judge in Tennessee nullified the rule as it applies to poles owned by AT&T and other private parties.
The next step for AT&T and Comcast was overturning the rule as it applies to poles owned by the municipal Nashville Electric Service (NES), which owns around 80 percent of the Nashville poles. AT&T and Comcast achieved that on Friday with a new ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Aleta Trauger. Nashville's One Touch Make Ready ordinance "is ultra vires and void or voidable as to utility poles owned by Nashville Electric Service because adoption of the Ordinance exceeded Metro Nashville's authority and violated the Metro Charter," the ruling said. Nashville is "permanently enjoined from applying the Ordinance to utility poles owned by Nashville Electric Service." The Nashville government isn't planning to appeal the decision, a spokesperson for Nashville Mayor Megan Barry told Ars today.
The next step for AT&T and Comcast was overturning the rule as it applies to poles owned by the municipal Nashville Electric Service (NES), which owns around 80 percent of the Nashville poles. AT&T and Comcast achieved that on Friday with a new ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Aleta Trauger. Nashville's One Touch Make Ready ordinance "is ultra vires and void or voidable as to utility poles owned by Nashville Electric Service because adoption of the Ordinance exceeded Metro Nashville's authority and violated the Metro Charter," the ruling said. Nashville is "permanently enjoined from applying the Ordinance to utility poles owned by Nashville Electric Service." The Nashville government isn't planning to appeal the decision, a spokesperson for Nashville Mayor Megan Barry told Ars today.
Instead to compete with the incumbents, you become beholden on them if you want to provide service to a new customer (which probably means they will be losing a customer) I'm sure they will pull out all the stops.
Nashville Electric Service should require that only their contractors can work on wires on their poles, and provide the same SLA's and charge the same fees to all customers.
Really? I don't have any skepticism. Without rules like this, I can tell you exactly how this situation goes:
Google needs access to a particular pole as no available ground is around for them to put up one of their own. They contact the owner - let's say AT&T. AT&T replies that they have to go through a risk analysis: after all, there's a lot of important stuff on that pole.
Google hears nothing. In the mean time the clock is running, their investments in other infrastructure that is waiting on this pole are sitting costing money, etc. AT&T never responds, but when Google goes back to them they reply that the risk Assessment is done but they have to pass it through engineering as well.... and the public utility uses the pole already. So Google needs to get clearance from the local utility before AT&T will let them use the pole.
More weeks go by....... and eventually AT&T strangles any competition that needs access to that pole / tower / etc.
Why didn't Google propose this?
Because that's exactly what they did. Except Google is still the one who does the work. Outside of that one difference, yeah Google and NES worked on an alliance to get the fiber laid without OTMR, but even then AT&T and Comcast have already extended the local appeals process to seven years for make ready work. This is literally why AT&T can't extend into the Comcast only region I'm in. There's a fiber optic end point only 300 feet from where I live and AT&T can't extend it because we're only four out of the seven years into it. Even then, there's been talk to extend the appeals process even more. Pretty much all the local folks who were going to work on the Google fiber project have pretty much conceded that AT&T and Comcast are ready to scorch earth the process just to ensure that people like Google can't make any headway in the future. Shit, they already quake at EPB in Chattanooga. It's clear, neither want a fair market and all the politicians here in the state are more than happy to let them have it. Even if that means that AT&T can't draw that final 300 feet of fiber or the other hundreds of examples like that in the Comcast monopoly zones.