A pair of broadband bills in Pennsylvania (one of which has been signed into law by the governor, and the other having passed one chamber) represent a collective step forward for broadband by updating regulations and establishing a broadband grant program so as to promote network expansion in rural and unserved parts of the state of Pennsylvania.

Fewer Restrictions, More Money

The first is House Bill 2438 [pdf], which allows electric cooperatives to use existing easements for an affiliate to deliver broadband service without re-negotiating with property owners. The bill also allows cable companies to use cooperative-owned poles with permission and in accordance with existing rates and regulations. It’s designed to make it faster, cheaper, and easier to bring Internet access to rural parts of the state. 

Johnstown Area Regional Industries entrepreneurial coach Blake Fleegle said of the legislation: 

Every county in our region is looking at bringing high-dollar earners to our region. Employers are finding people can be just as effective working in Johnstown as they would be in Washington, D.C., or Pittsburgh. But they need to connect, and that's where broadband comes into play.

Chad Carrick, President and CEO of REA Energy Cooperative, likewise welcomed the legislation while emphasizing the role electric co-ops will play in the state: 

It may be hard for some to believe, but there is a good 40% of Indiana and Cambria counties that either don't have broadband Internet access or it's not up to snuff, according to our surveys to our membership.

2438 passed the state House in June, the Senate at the end of October, and was signed into law by the governor at the end of last month. 

The second is Senate Bill 835 [pdf], titled the “Unserved High-Speed Broadband Funding Pilot...

Over the last few months, a number of cities across the country have recognized the pressing need to find a way to get those in their community without Internet access connected. In San Rafael, California, San Antonio, Texas, and Champaign, Illinois, local governments along with a variety of philanthropic, technical, and private partners have developed a host of innovative ways to bring fixed wireless solutions to neighborhoods in need.

The city of McAllen (pop. 140,000) — near the mouth of the Rio Grande, at the southern tip of Texas — offers some additional lessons to be learned and a blueprint for success for other local governments thinking of doing the same. Quietly over the summer, it collected broadband data, designed, and deployed a fixed wireless network which to date covers more than three dozen neighborhoods and provides free connectivity for the city’s students and residents. 

Fiber From the Water Tower

Citywide Wi-Fi has been a long time coming in McAllen. Mayor Jim Dalson and the IT Department have wanted to do it for years, IT Director Robert Acosta said in an interview, but finding a way to pay for it has been the major barrier. In the meantime, his department has been adding wireless coverage to public spaces for the past half decade, at city parks, outside of government facilities, at the Museum of Art and Science, and at the Boys and Girls club. He also extended the network to traffic cameras, water towers, and other government facilities, and when the pandemic hit his department had more than 60 miles of fiber to call upon.

The current effort started in the middle of June, when the city commission and mayor allocated $2.9 million from county-distributed CARES money to the IT Department in order to get students connected for the upcoming school year (see map, right)....

Last December we wrote about Connecticut’s long-awaited victory by court affirmation in the fight to let its cities attach to utility poles at no cost in pursuit of spurring municipal broadband efforts. A similar effort seems to have stalled in its neighbor to the north, with HD 4492 languishing in the Massachusetts Legislature’s Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee. 

The bill, “An Act To Establish Municipal Access To Utility Poles Located In Municipal Rights-Of-Way,” is simple. It modifies Chapter 166, Section 22a of the state’s General Laws to eliminate pole attachment fees for cities working to build broadband networks to reach “unserved or underserved areas” (as defined by the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI)), shifting the expense instead to the current pole owner(s). John Barrett introduced the bill and two dozen fellow legislators co-signed it. It calls for: 

Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, for the purpose of safeguarding access to infrastructure essential to public health, safety and welfare, an owner of a shared-use pole and each entity attaching to that pole is responsible for that owner's or entity's own expenses for make-ready work to accommodate a municipality's attaching its facilities to that shared-use pole: a) For a governmental purpose consistent with the police power of the municipality; or b) For the purpose of providing broadband service to an unserved or underserved area.

Up in the Air

For parts of the country where aerial fiber sits at the core of network builds as a result of challenges posed by underlying geology (bedrock), overlying geography (topography), or other concerns that preempt underground construction, utility poles are the answer. Massachusetts has more than a million of them, and for projects just navigating the franchise areas of electric utility pole owners [pds] alone could be a daunting task. Getting timely, affordable access for make-ready work is an obstacle which can easily stall and kill a broadband project even when the...

In the past few years, states around the U.S. have made incremental changes in their laws to ease restrictions on municipalities and cooperatives interested in developing high-quality Internet network infrastructure. When communities in Connecticut wanted to exercise their right to space on utility poles at no cost, however, pole owners objected. After a drawn out review of the state's "Municipal Gain" law, local communities have finally obtained the decision they've pursued to develop cost-effective publicly owned fiber optic municipal networks.

Process, Procedure, and PURA

In 2016, the state's Office of Consumer Counsel (OCC) turned to Connecticut's Public Utility Regulatory Agency (PURA) and asked the agency to clarify a 110-year-old state law regarding utility poles in municipal rights-of-way (ROW). In Connecticut, about 900,000 of the poles are scattered throughout the state and are prime locations for fiber optic cables for improved connectivity. Most of the poles belong to Verizon, Frontier, one of the state's electric providers, or are jointly owned by two or more of them.

The Municipal Gain Law was created in the early 1900s to give local communities reserved space with no attachment fee on the poles in order to hang telegraph wires. As telephone and other technologies evolved that required wiring, municipalities wanted to take advantage of the space. There were several lawsuits between pole owners and municipalities over the years with pole owner interests usually losing out to the needs of the public. By 2013, it became clear that amending the law to allow communities to access the municipal gain space "for any use" made sense and the state legislature made the statutory language change. Local communities saw the change as an opportunity to string fiber in the space, establishing publicly owned infrastructure on which they could partner with private sector providers for improved local connectivity.

Incumbent Internet access companies saw it as a threat to their monopolies and mobilized to stop the trend. Incumbent ISPs began with tactics such as pole attachment agreements with strict terms that limited municipalities' ability to complete a project in a timely manner....