Fights Over Rural America’s Phone Poles Slow Internet Rollout

The U.S. plans to spend at least $60 billion in the next decade to ensure every American household has high-speed internet. An old-fashioned obstacle stands in the way: utility poles. Getting everyone the same service city dwellers enjoy generally means stretching fiber-optic cable to homes, farms and ranches in rural areas. Many of these places already have utility poles carrying electric or telephone wires. The poles are owned by electric or phone companies that often aren’t getting public money to build out broadband, triggering skirmishes that some internet providers blame for slowing needed upgrades. Disputes involving utility poles have gummed up broadband projects in Kentucky, Michigan and South Carolina. One squabble in Socorro (NM) left two elementary schools without high-speed internet for several years. “Our students really suffered,” said Ron Hendrix, superintendent of the Socorro school district. It is “years of not having high-speed network out to two schools that really need it.” The disputes are complicating a rural broadband rollout that Washington is pursuing with new vigor, part of the federal government’s expanding role in internet service as it seeks to upgrade U.S. infrastructure. The Covid-19 pandemic underscored the need for broadband as many Americans left cities for rural areas.