[1st-mile-nm] Pole Attachment.... was Re: This is what a Gig looks like or Another Gig building in downtown ABQ

[John Brown]

Hi John,

Yes, I saw that pop up and read it this morning.   The only place the
term "pole attachment" came up was under "Other".   They seem to be
mulling over what to do about pole attachment.

I believe a number of other providers around the country have executed
business plans and have been able to get REASONABLE pole attachment
agreements.  Now they are worried those might go away.

So Chairman Pai now has to figure out how to gut Wheeler's Net
Neutrality order, but not actually cause end users to get
disconnected, or business models to fail.  That would be a
political nightmare since the Pai FCC wants to be "light touch'.

Personally I believe its pretty simple:
If you are a provider of broadband services, a 477 filer, or a 499
filer (even de minimis), then you have rights to the poles and the
pole owners must negotiate in a timely and good faith manner. For
those that do not, the FCC can levy sanctions and other economic
penalties.

What I found interesting here in NM / ABQ, is that one pole owner
presented us with a very cobbled together agreement, as if they had
never done a pole attachment agreement in their life. Come on
folks!!!!!   This has been a common practice since, umm, 1996 with
CLEC's !!!    Take the same language and modify it slight for
"Broadband Provider" and move on.

A pole attachment agreement should spell out reasonable technical, safety,
economic, and liability requirements that follow existing Federal rules.
It does NOT need to be complicated.

On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 6:52 PM, John Badal <JBadal at sacred-wind.com> wrote:
> John B.
>
> The FCC's recent Notice of Public Rulemaking (NOPR) on reducing broadband
> impediments -specifically targeting pole attachments and federal ROW - was
> just released in the federal register,  which means comments can be
> submitted to the FCC over the next 30 days.  I am skeptical about the FCC's
> will to preempt electric companies' rights to kill competition, especially
> as it applies to rural coops, but I've found that some good comes from these
> NOPR exercises.  Often a tiny bit, but what an opportunity to vent!
>
> John B2.
>
>
>
> Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: John Brown <john at citylinkfiber.com>
> Date: 5/11/17 6:37 PM (GMT-07:00)
> To: John Floren <john at jfloren.net>
> Cc: 1st-Mile-NM <1st-mile-nm at mailman.dcn.org>
> Subject: Re: [1st-mile-nm] This is what a Gig looks like or Another Gig
> building in downtown ABQ
>
> Hi John.
>
> I would love to do the North East.  Here is the single ROAD BLOCK.
>
> Pole Attachment.
>
> The ability to attach our fiber cable to the poles (owned by
> CenturyLink and PNM) would enable
> a more cost effective solution.
>
> In 2015 the FCC enacted new rules that GRANTED companies like ours the
> ability to legally use the poles.  The pole owners (CenturyLink and
> PNM) are thus legally required to let us on
> the poles with a reasonable agreement.
>
> Since that 2015 time, I've spent more than $100K in legal and other
> costs trying to get the
> pole owners to get us that reasonable agreement and to permit us on the
> poles.
>
> One of them has basically come back saying that they don't think these
> FCC rules will stick around and thus only want to grant us a 1 year
> agreement.  Why would I spend hundreds of thousands putting fiber on
> poles only to have it be at risk next year.  CenturyLink, Comcast,
> Level3 don't have those risks.  They have very long term agreements.
>
> I've even gone to the City of Albuquerque's CIO, Peter Ambs and to the
> City's legal folks.
> Neither of them see any reason to be involved.  Yet its the City's
> rights of way and you would
> think that the City would want to encourage competition and actually
> promote a Gigabit City.
> They say its a matter between pole owners and the provider.  Buts its
> their RoW and they
> require users of the RoW to follow Federal Law.  But our city leaders
> don't want to rock the
> boat with big companies like CenturyLink or PNM
>
> BTW, that $100K+ i've spent could have been spent putting fiber on
> poles and would have gotten up to Carlise by now.
>
> And then you have that huge amount of money PNM is spending on
> automated meter reading.
> I think its like $90+ million.  Hmm, If PNM had actually come to the
> table, we have a solution
> for AMR that would NOT have cost rate payers a penny....  Yup, PNM
> wants YOU to pay for their meter systems, so they can reduce operating
> costs......
>
> I've also spoke with State elected officials and said that one of the
> two things they could do this
> last legislative session was to bring Pole Attachment under the PRC,
> with a simple unified
> set of rules.  That would have actually done NEW MEXICO some good.
> But they didn't touch it
> at all.
>
> Don't like this stuff, call your elected leaders and get them doing their
> job.
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 6:23 PM, John Floren <john at jfloren.net> wrote:
>> Do NE ABQ first! :) I'm dealing with CenturyLink and it's the worst.
>>
>> On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 6:19 PM, John Brown <john at citylinkfiber.com>
>> wrote:
>>> We would love to serve the Santa Fe market.  We get around 35 to 40
>>> requests each week.
>>> Either for fiber based or fixed wireless based services.
>>> We have to decline them all because of the silly rules that Santa Fe
>>> has in place.
>>>
>>> Several years ago, when Santa Fe put out  a bid for a fiber project,
>>> we submitted a proposal.
>>> For the $1M in tax payer money we proposed a RING based system
>>> (redundancy).
>>>
>>> Instead the City awarded the project to another company that:
>>> a) had never built or operated an outside fiber plant / network
>>> b) only built a straight line, no redundancy, no ring.
>>>
>>> This was of course after spending 5 years attempting to get the City
>>> to even engage and work
>>> towards a franchise agreement.  We had to make a threat to sue the
>>> City for failing to act on
>>> our request.  Only then did the City respond, but in a way that cause
>>> the City to get sued AGAIN by CenturyLink.  I might add that
>>> CenturyLink was correct in litigating and defending its rights against
>>> a poorly written set of rules from the City.
>>>
>>> Then there are the City's wireless rules. If you read them and truly
>>> follow them, then every WISP in Santa Fe should be filing for permits
>>> and paying the fees.
>>>
>>> So, if at some point City of Santa Fe, or its people, want to discuss
>>> how to move forward, I'm all ears and willing to find a good solution.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 5:22 PM, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>> I hate you! :)
>>>>
>>>> So whataya gotta do to get this in Santa Fe? I'm thinking about the
>>>> second
>>>> street area, Lena St lofts and other office complexes.
>>>>
>>>> Then I'd love ya.
>>>>
>>>>    -- Owen
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 2:14 PM, John Brown <john at citylinkfiber.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Just connected another building in downtown ABQ with a Gig of service.
>>>>> This speed test is via a NAT'd connection, so the slight drop in speed
>>>>> is because
>>>>> of the clients NAT router..
>>>>>
>>>>> http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6290260546
>>>>>
>>>>> All using open source based tools, technologies and products.
>>>>>
>>>>> using simple passive optics we can upgrade the building to 10Gig, by
>>>>> simply changing out
>>>>> the SFP's to SFP+.  About $200 in cost to do that......
>>>>>
>>>>> What is really neat is we will shortly be leveraging Juniper's vSRX
>>>>> platform to handle network security on a per port basis for each
>>>>> tenant in the building.  This will save the customer on
>>>>> firewall hardware / maint costs.  They also won't have to do
>>>>> technology upgrades every few years.
>>>>> Another huge savings.
>>>>>
>>>>> Coming soon (like 2 weeks) we will turn up our first 2.5Gb/s wireless
>>>>> link to a commercial tenant,
>>>>> followed by a 5Gb/s link in June
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> 1st-mile-nm mailing list
>>>>> 1st-mile-nm at mailman.dcn.org
>>>>> http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/1st-mile-nm
>>>>
>>>>
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