Keller & Heckman recently highlighted an issue that anybody building fiber on utility poles should be aware of. In some cases, an easement obtained for using private land to bring electric service might not automatically allow an easement for bringing fiber. There is a subtle difference between easements and rights-of-of way. An easement allows somebody to carry out an activity on private land. It was typical when electric companies built the power grid to seek an easement from each landowner to give permission to erect electric poles for bringing electric service. Rights-of-way are generally more specific and wider in scope. A city will often decree that it has a right-of-way in perpetuity to use the first few feet from the street of each property for civic purposes. The city can then use the right-of-way to allow for underground utilities or to place a fire hydrant. Keller & Heckman warned that the original language of the easement might restrict usage for adding fiber. If the original easement language was narrow and only talked about bringing electric service, then somebody adding fiber would need to seek a new easement for every property underneath a pole line. If the original easement was more generic in nature, it might have allowed for electric and other services, in which case the electric company would have an easement to cover allowing others on its poles.

[Doug Dawson is president of CCG Consulting.]

Broadband providers are telling the Federal Communications Commission in no uncertain terms to reject calls by cable programmer Fuse Media and public advocacy groups to mandate that those providers collect data on the diversity of the video content vendors they buy programming from, including for their owned or affiliated streaming services which, they point out, are not regulated by the FCC. And as for unaffiliated streaming companies like Netflix, Apple TV or Roku, they argue that without putting diversity data collection requirements on them, too, the FCC certainly won't be getting a view of the marketplace. NCTA-The Internet & Television Association and USTelecom made those points in comments. “Any report purporting to say anything about the video marketplace without covering these major participants [Netflix, Apple TV, etc.] would be of questionable value,” the groups told the FCC. “[I]t would be inappropriate to place regulatory burdens only on certain online providers that happen to be affiliated with FCC regulatees.” But NCTA and USTelecom aren't looking to have the FCC put diversity reporting requirements on any of the major participants. ”Nothing in the Communications Act authorizes the Commission to collect the broad sets of proposed data from the entities it actually is authorized to regulate or those regulatees’ affiliates that are not regulated by the Commission,” they said, “much less from third-party programming vendors over which the Commission has no authority to mandate such data collections.”