Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
The next time you’re driving down a rural highway, glance over at the utility poles lining the side of the road. If rural Indiana is still struggling with poor internet access five years from now, chances are those poles will be one big reason why.
About 12% of homes and businesses across Indiana—and nearly 40% in Carroll County, where I live—don’t have any options for high-speed, wired broadband. Help is on the way, as Indiana is spending $350 million to spur rural network construction, and the federal government is sending us another $868 million to finish the job.
But dollars alone won’t string fiber from point A to point B. The broadband providers building these networks still need someplace to put the wires—and that means renting space on utility poles owned by electric utilities.
That turns out to be more complicated than it sounds. Moving around the existing electric, phone, cable TV and internet lines to make room for new attachments impacts a whole slew of companies, any of which might gum up the works.
And while the companies’ lawyers fight it out, network construction grinds to a halt for months, if not years. Unserved communities like mine are left waiting even longer for a digital lifeline.
Pole-attachment disputes are one of the biggest obstacles threatening Indiana’s rural broadband build-out. And the problem will only get worse as federal infrastructure funding spurs a flood of new network buildout projects over the next few years.
It’s not quite the Wild West. Congress and the Federal Communications Commission have already enacted reams of regulations to help settle these pole-attachment disagreements. But filing complaints and litigating disputes through agencies in Washington, D.C., can take years to resolve.
Indiana needs to get ahead of this problem. With some leadership and creative thinking, we can come up with solutions that avoid years-long pole disputes and keep rural broadband projects on schedule and on budget.
For example, Indiana’s Legislature has already committed a pool of funding for rural broadband build-outs, and some counties still have some money remaining from the federal American Rescue Plan Act. Setting aside a small portion of these dollars to create a pole replacement fund—which counties could tap to quickly replace old or damaged poles while the companies fight over who’s ultimately responsible for reimbursing the costs—would keep broadband projects moving while still protecting taxpayers.
Better digital infrastructure would be a game-changer for rural communities like mine, boosting our ability to attract new businesses, improve health care delivery and keep young residents from moving away.
But all the best intentions in the world won’t make an ounce of difference if long, expensive fights between pole owners and broadband providers derail these projects and leave rural Hoosiers stranded in the digital wilderness.
Indiana can become a model for the rest of the country in the race to wire every home and business across America. We’ll just need some creativity—and some leadership—to make sure something as basic as a utility pole doesn’t become a barrier to progress.•
__________
Adams is executive director of the Carroll County Economic Development Corp.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
Having worked in IT (Network Engineer) for a metro power utility, the first thing I can tell you is these utility poles (at least in the state of Indiana) are not utility or telephone poles, they are power poles. I also know that getting access to poles is a problem, but one that seems to be somewhat self manufactured. I had a project to run fiber for the utilities own use from a substation to nearby service center (about a mile) and it ended up underground rather on the poles. I was told (verbally) by the engineer I was working with, that “he glanced at the poles sideways” as he was driving by and he could tell they would have needed to be upgraded. These poles carried 34KVA distribution lines, and there were about 20 of them at $25K a piece that would have needed to be upgraded.
There is a rule on the books with the IURC that says that if a power company examine a utility pole and they know it’s not up to code they have to replace that pole and two poles in either direction to get them up code. Standards change slowly, but when a pole is placed, utilities are hoping to get maybe 30 to 50 years out of them. Stringing extra fiber means that substandard poles are subject to even more stress. The rule is a good one, but the bottom line rules the decision making at for profit utilities.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I know there is a lot of substandard infrastructure out in the field and it’s easer and cheaper to ignore it, rather than cut profits even by a little bit.
As I read about high winds in Colorado causing power outages to thousands of people, I have to wonder why we have all of our utilities hanging from poles, especially in part of the country where hurricanes are prevalent.
When I lived in England, we had an entire day of gale force winds, 40 mph gusting to 70, and living in a small village, the lights only flickers a few times. There were NO “wide spread outages”. Sorry, I answered my own question. Burying utilities is more expansive in the short run. It would hurt the bottom line.