Utility Files Updated W.Va. Pole Attachment Pact With Frontier

Monongahela Power and Potomac Edison filed an amended agreement with Frontier Communications in response to scrutiny from the West Virginia Public Service Commission about duplicative processes slowing pole-attachment application reviews (see 2212020048). Under the updated pact, the utility will perform the engineering review for both electric and communication spaces for jointly used poles, Mon Power said Thursday. “Frontier will not perform the engineering analysis on the application from a third-party [attacher], thus eliminating duplicative review and reducing costs and time to proposed third-party attachers.” The only exception is that Frontier will perform engineering for make-ready construction it must do to accommodate a new attachment, it said. Previous “agreements with Frontier’s predecessors are antiquated and do not reflect the current broadband market and dramatic increase in the number of entities desiring to attach to these poles,” the utility said. “Many of these agreements are from the 1980’s when generally if there were any attachments at all, it was the cable TV company.”