Evan Swarztrauber: Congress Needs to Step In on Broadband Expansion
Aggressive FCC enforcement and congressional action is necessary to establish a uniform national standard on pole-attachment cost-sharing and timelines, the author writes.
In May, 104 homes in Bossier Parish, Louisiana, became the first to be connected through the broadband initiative embedded within the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. It took years of planning and debate, but the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program is now disbursing over $20 billion to connect rural households and small businesses across the country.
However, problems remain, including basic access to utility poles and the costs of using them. A new study estimates that pole-related costs could balloon from $1.25 billion to over $4.5 billion—a gap large enough to strain budgets, slow deployment, or even cause project defaults that leave communities without service.
Without federal intervention, disputes between pole owners and broadband providers could delay or deny connectivity for millions of Americans.
In rural areas, most fiber is deployed by lashing it onto utility poles, which is far more cost-effective than burying lines in sparsely populated terrain. That same study found that aerial fiber accounts for roughly 190,000 route miles, about 40% of BEAD's planned fiber buildout. With some 180 million utility poles spread across the country under varying ownership, broadband providers must navigate a maze of companies, cities, cooperatives, and regulations to deploy their networks.
The disputes between pole owners and broadband providers often boil down to costs. Utilities throughout the country allow their poles to decay and incur safety violations without making the necessary repairs to accommodate fiber deployment. Both sides inevitably clash over who has to pick up the tab and bear responsibility for missed deadlines.
This is where the FCC steps in.
Last year, the agency unanimously adopted new rules requiring utilities to approve qualified contractors within 30 days and gave broadband providers new remedies when utilities miss a deadline. The Commission also established a Rapid Broadband Assessment Team (RBAT) to fast-track the resolution of pole disputes that threaten broadband deployment.
In February, the FCC ruled that Appalachian Power couldn't make broadband companies foot the bill for safety problems the utility itself had let go unaddressed. The principle is simple: if a wire-hanger didn't cause the problem, they shouldn't pay to fix it. Appalachian Power has been slow to comply, and the agency has options to escalate penalties, including ease-and-desist orders, ordering refunds for overpayments, and pursuing forfeitures in extreme cases.
But FCC enforcement only gets you so far, and the agency's reach is narrower than most people realize. Poles are owned by a hodgepodge of governments, electric companies, and cooperatives, and the FCC's rules only apply to investor-owned utilities in 27 states. There are so many layers of complexity and carve-outs in this sector, and only Congress has the ultimate power to simplify it.
Congress should consider codifying the cost-causation principle that the FCC unanimously affirmed and extend the agency’s authority to all pole owners. That would give every broadband provider, every pole owner, and every state broadband office the same predictable rulebook.
Congress can also impose shot clocks to ensure that delays don’t turn into a negotiating tactic.
Pole owners deserve fair compensation for the actual costs they incur and reasonable timelines for processing applications. But they shouldn’t be allowed to leverage their monopoly to extract unjustified fees from broadband companies.
Bipartisan action on broadband is possible. Just recently, President Trump signed the Rural Broadband Protection Act—sponsored by Senators Capito, Klobuchar, and Curtis—which requires deeper vetting of broadband grant recipients. Senator Capito has raised pole-attachment costs as a barrier to BEAD deployment in her home state of West Virginia. And leaders in Congress remain committed to pursuing broader permitting reforms to speed up nationwide buildout.
The families in rural Louisiana who just got their first BEAD connection are the start of what this program is supposed to deliver. BEAD was built on bipartisan consensus, and solving the pole problem should be too.
Evan Swarztrauber is a senior fellow at the Digital Progress Institute, a bipartisan technology and telecommunications policy think tank in Washington, DC. Previously, he was a policy advisor at the Federal Communications Commission to then-Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Brendan Carr. This Expert Opinion is exclusive to Broadband Breakfast.
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