Telephone Poles

Whoops. The title of this blog post is wrong. It should be "utility poles," which points to one of the many ironies in the hidden life of the ubiquitous utility pole.

Most of what are commonly known as telephone poles are actually owned by the electric utility -- 70% of them, in fact. But whether a telephone company or other utility owns the poles, every other kind of company that hangs anything on these poles pays the utility company for the privilege, and under current federal rules a cable company and a telephone company pay different rates for attaching their lines to a pole. But now that broadband and IP communications are merging voice, data and video, charging different rates for different types of communications services seems to make less and less sense. Make no mistake about it: the humble telephone, er, utility pole, is hot real estate. Companies pay, on average, anywhere between $7 per foot and $20 per foot for a pole attachment. Multiplied by hundreds of thousand of poles, that can have an impact on whether services are delivered to a community or not. Utility poles are essential infrastructure, and infrastructure costs can affect the price or availability of service, the National Broadband Plan found. In rural areas, where there may be more poles per mile than people, the cost of pole attachments could deter broadband deployment. Or in other instances, a cable company planning to bundle voice, data and video in the coaxial cable might be deterred if the voice service would subject the company to a higher pole attachment rate.