It seems like I read something about pole attachments almost every day. Across the country at federal, state, and industry association meetings there are dire warnings being issued that the cost involved on getting onto poles is going to be a huge hindrance to the implantation of BEAD grants. Everybody who is talking about this is right, but this is not a new topic – we’ve been talking about this for decades.

Now that we are on the eve of finally seeing broadband offices reviewing BEAD grant applications, these warnings feel like too little too late for me. I’m not sure that the folks calling for new pole regulations understand how complicated and challenging it is to change the process of attaching to poles.

For example, I’ve seen folks arguing that the FCC should just order that pole owners be given 30 days to make a pole ready to accept a new fiber. These folks have never gone into the field and taken a close look at poles and the pole attachment process to understand how ludicrous such a rule would be. It sounds trite to say, but every pole is a unique case and must be treated individually.   If you don’t believe that, I challenge you to go walk along one of the streets in your town where there are a lot of businesses and look at every pole. You’ll likely see a wide variety of situation if you walk a mile.

• You’ll probably see many wooden poles, but also some metal poles.
• You’ll see pole of vastly different ages, with some looking brand new and some looking like they are ready to fall down in the first stiff wind.
• You’ll see poles of differing heights. The tall poles likely have a lot more space to place a new wire than the shorter ones.
• You’ll see stretches of the same road with varying numbers of existing wires connected.
• You should notice that the poles at intersections are a lot more complex, with wires coming from multiple directions.
• And you’ll likely to see a few poles that have things hanging on them other than wires. There might be small cell systems, public safely cameras, or devices hung by the electric utility.
• And you’ll see a maze of drop wires connecting electric, telephone, cable, and fiber wires to nearby buildings.
• If you look closely, you’ll see existing wires that are not hung properly. They might differ from pole to pole on how close they are to neighboring poles. Some wires will have more sag between poles than the other wires on the same pole.

Pole attachment rules and processes are complex because poles are complex. It’s likely if you take an inventory of what you see during this informal survey that a fairly large percentage of poles have enough room to hang a new fiber. Pole attachment rules are not created to deal with the easy poles – but with the complex ones. An ISP that wants to hang fiber along a street can’t do so until every pole has been made ready.

It’s likely that every third, fourth or fifth pole will have an issue. That is at the heart of why it’s so hard to hang new fiber on poles. There might need to be a different solution for each of the poles with problems. Some are so short or so old that they must be replaced. Some will need the existing wires rearranged to make room for a new fiber.

The first step in getting poles ready for fiber is a fair assessment of which poles need to be replaced or amended. That means somebody who knows what they are doing has to visually assess every pole. After the assessment, the pole owner needs to make all the fixes. Anybody who wants a utility to fix a lot of poles in 30 days seems to think that there is a magic army of technicians somewhere who can be activated to make the changes quickly.

The above description is somewhat simplistic in that there are unfortunately places where almost all of the existing poles have problems. There are places where the pole owners let trees grow up in the rights-of-way. There are places where all poles are old, short, and have no space for a new wire.

I’ve worked with many ISPs to help them through the pole attachment process, and it is rarely easy and often extremely frustrating. There are pole owners who try to make the process easy. But there are pole owners antagonistic to attachers. Unfortunately, there is no universe where we can wave the magic wand of a new regulatory fiat and make pole attachments happen quickly. Anybody who believes this really needs to spend a day looking at poles.