Telecommunications companies have surprisingly strong opinions about pole attachments. Several groups filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission advocating for a more streamlined process related to pole attachments. But AT&T and Verizon, to the contrary, filed comments indicating they don’t want any changes. The FCC is interested in clarifying the process and costs for those seeking to attach telecommunications equipment to utility poles. It issued a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) in March and has since been seeking stakeholder comments. Yesterday, INCOMPAS, an association that represents fiber builders, filed comments that were reflective of the views of many companies. “While it may sound like an under-the-radar issue, pole attachment policy may ultimately determine the speed, success or failure of the nation’s historic bipartisan broadband infrastructure investment,” said Chip Pickering, CEO of INCOMPAS. It said red-tape, costs and other barriers from utility pole owners “fundamentally restrict providers from reaching the most hard-to-reach, most unserved customers by frustrating an already challenging economic model in such areas.” But Verizon and AT&T have completely different opinions about the issue. Verizon’s filing yesterday said the current pole attachment rules correctly allocate costs and provide the clarity and predictability needed to reduce disputes and promote deployment.

Verizon will deliver enhanced connectivity to approximately 80 Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools operated by Native American tribes on 64 reservations in 13 states. Verizon’s network investment across diverse tribal lands is expected to lead to reliable, high-speed internet service and connected devices for thousands of students. The work will support BIE's mission to provide quality education opportunities from early childhood through life in accordance with a tribe's needs for cultural and economic well-being. Verizon had previously upgraded more than 100 sites from legacy T1.5s to 100MB sites, work awarded via the US General Services Administration’s (GSA) Networx contract. Many of those schools will now gain access to 1Gb internet connections through an extension of Verizon’s existing Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) task order. Native American students across the program’s 13 states will benefit from more robust technology in the classroom, and significantly increased speed and bandwidth. Addressing this challenge has been a long-term commitment by Verizon as part of its responsible business plan - Citizen Verizon - whose mission includes expanding digital access and resources to promote digital equity and inclusion. Verizon coordinated with multiple third-party access suppliers to design and engineer special access arrangements on a site-by-site basis. The infrastructure work across the 13 states will take place through 2023.

It’s the time of the year when the results come out for the American Customer Satisfaction Index that asks customers to rate their satisfaction with a wide range of industries and the larger companies within those industries. This is a huge nationwide poll that ranks the public’s satisfaction with 400 large companies in 45 sectors. As has been happening for many years, the large Internet Service Providers (ISPs) come in dead last when comparing ISPs to 44 other industries. ISPs were given an overall customer service ranking of 64. The industries ranked just above ISPs at the bottom were related, with subscription TV services (66) and video-on-demand services (68). This puts ISPs below gas stations (68), hospitals (69), and the US Post Office (70). What I find most amazing about this ranking is how politicians have fought so hard and often to protect these companies from regulation. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always thought that a state politician running to strongly regulate the biggest cable company in a state would gain a lot of votes.

[Doug Dawson is president of CCG Consulting.]

Shannon Thomas Carroll, head of global environmental sustainability for AT&T, knows how difficult it is to find reliable climate data. When sustainability officials at the telecommunications giant began searching for local-level data on climate impacts as part of the company’s efforts to shore up its infrastructure in response to climate change, they had a lot of trouble finding usable information. So AT&T engaged the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory in 2019 with about $1.6 million in funding to help with its resiliency project, which culminated in the development of a tool to model how climate change will impact weather disasters over the next 30 years. In May 2022, the company publicly unveiled new projections on how future wildfires and droughts will affect the contiguous 48 states. Carroll spoke at the Aspen Ideas: Climate conference in Miami Beach (FL) about why the company launched and funded the project, what the data says and doesn’t say about climate risk and the importance of getting internal stakeholders on board.