Now our free mobile app or where ever you get your podcast. Cspan, your unfiltered view of politics. Is coming up a discussion of the federal Communications Commission regulatory efforts on attachments by cabletelevision or Telecommunications Providers to poles owned by Utility Companies for this conversation is hosted by encompass during their communication and Technology Policy summit. [background noises] [inaudible conversations]udible] well, this is thanks very much to my panelists for being here today. Since this is tv, i wt to todays panel really is a spinoff of last years panel we did this exact same time on broadband deployment. We had one or two questions on full attachment with this you were spending it off into its very own panel we had one of the stars of last years panel. [applause] todays panel is more than joni and shoji. Here and for sticking around and being part of todays summit. Youve heard a lot about taxes over the day youre going to hear a little bit more i think this is an important issue for a number of our members. And frankly theres a lot that has happened even in the trust the last three months. Last years of panel i could have said join us at next year same bat time, same bat channel. The truth is we have actually seen some modest changes to the pole attachment rules we wanted to walk you through some of thoseay. We wanted to do it by telling the story our members have oppod interest in terms of their own broadband deployment. I am thrilled to be jne a number of worldclass builders today. If i could have each of you, well start with you francisco. Go down the road tell us a little bit about yourself, tell us about your company and then tell us about the interest you have and pull attachment and ine are regional Fiber Broadband provider in the state. We are in the process of building about half a million over the last five years. Leveraging art network. We are owned a private equity infrastructure fund. Then about 600 million of capitol we are deploying in communities. Obviously the cost for passing we are very familiar with it. Obviously getting access to the infrastructure in these markets is key to our ability to deploy as quickly as we can and as effectively as we can. We have some great partnerships with our facility providers. Someone once told me do they make Good Neighbors . We have a set of rules wqe live by. Whats good for them is good for us. Nationwide provider of shared infrastructure we owned about, s of fiber at one or 15000 small cells or contract. We offer variety of communication services. We lease our towers to communication providers, et cetera. Art small cell and fiber business having access to infrastructure is crucial. Li the here we have a line attachment one thing the ground is a little bit differently as we offer the small cell infrastructure to attach and tennis and f deploy. These have been used for a variety of things over 100 years think abo the telegraph and telephone, longdistance and the fiber worlde an essential functr our business. It is crucial to have access to that infrastructure terms and im cheap innovation officer for kansas based provider. Ive been in this space a long time. When the process does work, it works well its a very costefficient way to deploy fiber. And our interes in attachment policy is related to the cost of deployment and aeraging existing infrastructure to deploy it at better cost. The world space of our state every dollar we can save it allowsus to go further into a mt further into the rural underserved homes. Its incredibly important to serve the uerserved. Earlier you heard commissioner carr. You heard about the battles of last year in terms of action on the Commission Last year you walked us through what they were considering. Adopted in decembe its order, declaratory ruling. It was probably the most monumental pole attachment policy shift we have seen since the 2018 order thesee along vere like to celebrate our winds at. It was four years in the making. It was initiated in 2020 and how they can be allocated. Weot december 2023 are brought a little bit of a cheat sheet because are so many elements of the order. A declaratory ruling in the proposed rulemaking will go to those in order. In theeportated process for determining pole attachment disputes. Intraagency task force evaluate disputes if its repeating or delaying broadband deployment. Think of that somhing is not a purely racist get your fibers up on the pole its preventing from reaching those customers. Thats a crucial modification the dispute rules. The second thing was requiring utilities to disclose a cyclical or periodic expection reports upon the request of a new attacher. U submit a request within 10 Business Days that is most recent for the set of poles are asking to apply to utilities have to retain these reports■ until the next intervening report comes out. The declaratory ruling has modified the commissions understanding of what it means to have a red tagged pole. This is cru. The way this proceeding was going we really wanted to find a better Cost Allocation for when in attacher is paid to replace replaceable because in our viewe paying for almost one and a of the cost of the replacement bowls the utility ultimately owns a pole. These two clarifications in the declaratory ruling one i pole at to read tag a pull up to the utility. And it also said the utility failing to red tagged a pole has a safetyiolation identified ther clarifications clarifying or when apole is not necessitated e to seek him out the list be tom. Its not when its necessitated attacher. There was a bit on requiring utilities to require copies of easement information practicing a new attacher cannot share or has to get their own easement. At there is an easement underlying the pole. Ito clarified when you submit a large order that has over 3000 poles or about 5 of the utility within a given state. This first 3000 the final bit or proposed will make a few items the commission is seeking comment onour additional changes to its rule. The first concerned that large order so those orders over 3000 poles are 5 of upon the state, the commission is allowing an extra 90 days for thei[ tim thes to approve or deny those applications. The commission is also asking should we prohibit a utility for imposing a limit on application size . Are folks taking advantage of the selfhelp provisis . Are the issue of contractor availability when you are employing selfhelp . Should i utility have to notify the survey work and should the commission make it easier for a new attacher to get contractors approved . A number of important claric rules and the fcc asking questions about further notice. I want to get your reactions to that. Will this help you, further enable you to there areas the Commission Left to some things on the table he would like to take act out in the future . Whats it really is important to us is to use some perspective we currently have 100,000 poles we Submit Application for. And so what happens is, you are having to go in and negotiate with that looks like. You are dealing with their very you might be looking at one individual thats handling joint use. You are not only in a dont have staff to process these applications. The second pieces once i start processing the applications in which you have no control over. It is kind of a blank check. Goes to the survey and get an invoice and pay what you pay. And then the timeline is also an issue there. I think adding the timeline requirements allows the utilities to effectively the cost gets passed on to us anyway for processing fees and so forth and so on. So we are paying for it anyway. We have actually done a version of selfhelp with our utilities and our footprints a hydro version. We start to interact directly with Engineering Firm to perform the surveys. I think theyre sort of eight middle ground here. You talk about the utility interested in . Theyre interested in safety that is what you always here. Youve got to make sure youre up to codes, all of those things. If we can invoke selfhelp you have contractors from the serving side of the group by the utilities that are using tools with the Engineering Firm they in turn provide the data into to theutility and were fully transparent. We get to control the timeline for it we control the resources, we control the money■ versus being an open checkbook. The same thing on the Construction Side that gets to be a little more tricky because what happens there is you have hurricanes or ice storms which then theres a shortage of poles and conductors and a lack of labor. I think those get the volume of the polls with the timeline you can selfhelp. We dont want to be heavyhanded we want firms approved by them and we can negotiate injury beat transparent with them and i think everyone wins. With they want is to get us out of their hair as quickly as possible so that this sort of of us. Lishes that goal from a we definitely want to be appreciative to the issue. It has come a long way and i appreciated encompasses the role it helps the industry get to where we are but you know me and some people know me here. I always have a few complaints about everything. [laughter] suggestions, suggestions. This, for us especially a small to mediumsize operator. It is the david and goliath situation. Operator trying to deal with a billiondollar utility its extremely challenging issue. Is not a Small Company by any means. But you have similar issues. And so while i can appreciate all of the work i think the ability, we will see what the bat how that works in it that is effective. We have seen in previous processes to be very ineffective for us we are an informal we just dont have the time frankly or the resources to issue formal complaints. Hallway this part of our industry is going to explode. We have all of this money coming into the industry that we need. We need efficient ways to deploy it. This has to be part of the process. If we dont get it right and for that reform this process quickly we are going to really collide with all of this money. So i think theres a lot of work to be done yet. I think francisco mentioned the blank check issue. Kind of missing from the latest order which i thought the fcc would connect wit■7h it in the commons elite worked with it encompasses an economic process where you incentivize through we are getting there we move from a cost because her argument now we have a grandfathering argument. But this idea where we need to incentivize through sharing of costs. Utilities to make the right decisions there are these arguments of safety and reliability. We understand that part we want that for our communitiesfrum of pull owners the utilities over c incentives work against you. They dont have to pay anything they are going to charge as much as possible to keep you off the pole if you gon the other side you have municipalities that are very invested in the community and often are some of the easiest to work with. Not neat less interested in safety and reliability but somehow you can attach quickly you dont have the massive complex engineeng processes that you have at the side. If the fcc would work on making sure its engineering costs that benefit the utility or pole replacement cost if they are sharing in those costs that will be the incentive that would bring the utilities owner processes into more of a realistic safety and reliability scope. Moving that in the middle through economic means is a suggestion that was the grandfathering process they have moved their argumenou have to pay everything to it is grandfathered. You have to pay for everything. It is a bit of a loophole there. Its kind of a reliable state at the time it was built and it was never touched up or 30 years therefore its very unfair argument its hard to articulate. We believe the grandfathering collecn you have put it forward methodology for polar placement the newest developments. Would they like to see the Commission Consider when they look at further notice in the selfhelp. Other areas that are open you like to see. Go in the comment cycle was open trying to emulate■n a non monopolistic market would look like. This really owned only one network of poles we need toatta. The owners are essentially a monopoly. We end u restrictions control the behaviors the study market whatd that look like and how much would each party be paying in a mp the fcc did not take that out. Cable was pushing that as well. I think we got a lot with the red taggeefinition and with the clarification on when a pole replacement is not necessary by the no further notice the contractor issues ctractor approved. The utility may have a list its only two contractors who. They are using both contractors both work for the utilities, the do a little work for us. They do not have any motivation to work with us especially given if we are employing selfhelp deadline we are in this space where we are going out without approval by the rules allow but the contractors are more reticent to do that. The issues the fcc is looking at additional contractor we think they should build a qualified within a set period of time so really important in terms of the Cost Allocation i think were going to see what we can do with the rules the sec adopted. I think will probably get into this we are defending dirt to sever for recons attacking the commissions reasoning that my name is on so my name is in a lot of the competition. In terms of defending the fccs order, opposing the petition and looking at those issues the fcc is teed up into further notice or what were going to focus on this year. Is going to say todays panel has the title holding the line navigating changes. Its not meant a lien on the way. It really is how do we protect and so to the group, you know, where are all of you on the . [÷s obviously, going to oppose each of these petitions i think all of you on the same page why is it important for the commission to reject to reconsideration and hold the line on with some of the modest changes to the attachmt;4 rules . It was interesting the fcc adopted this process where they release drafts of their orders before they vote on them had is relatively new phenomenon so this draft came the like thanksgiving day, i want to say and so you have a short period of time in which you can go to talk about the draft. And then when it was adopted in december, you know, it was voted out by the full mission it was interesting at the full commission committing commissioners were saying we never felt the attachment could be a contentious issue so you know, the the bit about the cyclical inspection reports disclosed, the utilities were going in eei included and between thanksgiving and christmas, were saying actually the commission should adopt this. This is great. Were really happy with this. Like in washington you know that youve middle result or sort of the center of the road result if no one is happy with the order but in this casee asking to do more and the utilities were like this is great like you guys should just vote this out as it is. So we think that the, you know, there were some improvements from the draft that was released in november to what was ultimately adopted in december as a result of, you know, an industry push to improve the fcc order. But the disclosure r limited ine transparency that theyre requiring of utilities, it is just strange to see complaingts about them now because the fec and we asked for Cable Companies asked for transparency any information that you have about the poll that were applying if you already keep it in your normal course of business then just disclose it to u and so fcc adopted something that was a little bit more conservative. And theyai if you, you know, if they keep a cyclical inspection report they have to disclose that. We think thats a modest improvement over the status and we would like to see that protected. You know, i think, you know, the utilities are saying well the information the report is y and out of date, and it will you know, increase amount of disputes because youre going to be second guessing us and probably in some cases we will be. Through that you know [laughter] so anyway, you know it is ant to defend. I think what well sort of see if those reports are of the limited utility that theyre claiming. But you know were fcc adopted. To daniel ask one more question but i wanted to give you an opportunity to come of of any opposition to some of the with reconsideration. I understood so forth and so on to market matters. So if you were to ask me whats the most important thinking is volume of polls, timelines, youe and hire a firm to do the make ready analysis if we can sep help and control a time line applicationd polls per lix and how to manage that flow with the utility because they may not work in the order to prioritiesohing to us at this point. Because we just you know, were under you know we have to get a h year, and so theres not, you know, we cant have paralysis by analysis we have to move so real we cannd agree with the point of like we dont need to■ j go backwaro getting data that was limited amount of data wed more data and idea that utility kangt go, you know, file, export and give us, you know, the metadata of polls that w a disappointing that we couldnt get that about and so you know, we dont need to go backwards from the bare minimum so beyond that like the overarching policy effort is din important part of that process and you know, more even more we taxpayer money that has to be deployed efficiently and this is one way to do it so those policy issues together should be you have in to reject any arguments that this has gone too far it should be going the, you know, further im glad you brought that up daniel because with all of this federal funding coming, you know, the commission really is only half the story. Other half of the story is the state, states are allowed if theyre reverse prestate to come with framework for polls where are the states on this . And what kind of wor to ensure that their full attachment rules are either better or at least match the commissions attachment rules . You know we found that states usually the most preemption states so in the district of columbia that dont follow the fcc rules on polls and can reverse preempt fcc come up with their own rules typically from the Public Service commission, and many have done so and many are currently in rules to make sure by the governor on Broadband Office making sure that theyre ready to roll out■j that broad banding investment that states will be receiving from other sources. There are still a disappointing number of states that l know, reverse preempghted in 96 never did anything afterwards so they may not have specific rules and may not have clear deadlines so when were operating in that environment, we cant, you know, we dont have the negotiating leverage with a monopoly poll owner to say we really think have those really good rules of the road. So there are number of states that are looking at this right now. We have file comments in new york yesterday. Maine, kentucky or states that are sort of ahead of the curve, looking at these issues asking questions of their, national and local providers, but theres a number of states that are really just not theyre not looking at the issue. And they may be left behind for investment or the investment ends up, you know, stranded and going to pay for poll replacements rather than broadband. Go daniel said it very well. [laughter] well we a minutes over so please join me in thanking our panelist. [applause] if your flavor is ch cheers with a beer or you know, frasier with a glass of blank were going that that r you in a second but welcome to our ceo chip great panel, thank you, i just really want to thank all of the speakers, the panelist, i thought it was tremendous day. Just incredible content, and insight and just a real high and individuals and you kind of get to see what motivates what informs them and so this was a good day and toipght thank all for attending i want to thank the sponsors were about to have a reception that google fiber is responsing sponsored all day and i really want to thank the encompass team and whole policy team andrew, lindsay, caroline, julia, did a tremendous job. [applause] gail wheres gail, keith so didnt leave anybody out . Leyland so tremendous team. So thank yall. Enjoy. We have, you know, for those of you from the south good bourbon, wine, good beer whatever you might want good enjoy, and thanks again for being here, and thanks for being part of the encompass policy summit. [applause]■j
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