Coalition of Concerned Utilities Defends FCC Pole Attachment Petition

The Coalition of Concerned Utilities defended its petition of certain parts of the FCC's December order revising pole attachment rules in a filing Tuesday in docket 17-84 (see 2312130044). The group sought elimination of "the requirement that utilities submit a copy of periodic pole inspection reports to attaching entities." Utility pole owners "should not be placed at odds with broadband providers," the coalition said, and electric utilities "should not be subject to a pole inspection report requirement that will provide no legitimate benefit to attachers." The requirement "may potentially divert time and scarce resources away from processing applications and ... much of the information in the pole inspection reports is unlikely to promote broadband deployment," UTC warned. The Utilities Technology Council also backed the petition.