ACLP Files Comments with the FCC on Eliminating Barriers to Wireline Deployments
The ACLP has filed comments with the FCC in its Build America: Eliminating Barriers to Wireline Deployments proceeding (WC Docket No. 25-253).
As an overview, the comments:
- Supplement the record with data on the sheer scale of the approvals a wireline build must clear, drawing on our prior analyses of permitting and utility poles.
- Document how, in the absence of clear rules of the road, localities have used their right-of-way (ROW) authority to extract revenue from ISPs and to tilt the playing field toward favored entrants.
- Support the Commission’s proposals — a shot clock, cost-based fee limits, a cap on in-kind compensation, and recognition of the mixed-use nature of modern networks — while urging the FCC to narrow the shot clock from 120 days to 60.
On scale: BEAD alone will require a minimum of 86,402 permitting events across more than 2,400 counties and 12,000 localities, more than half of them at the state or local level, plus nearly 4 million utility pole touches and roughly 1.4 million 811 locate tickets. The average BEAD project needs at least 8 permits, more than half need 10, and one in seven need more than 20. These projects must be built within four years of being funded.
That fragmentation matters because ISPs do not build in one town. Our analysis of the most recent FCC data finds that 93.6% of U.S. residential units are served by a wireline ISP that operates in more than one state, 91.1% by one operating in at least 100 counties, and 92.4% by one operating in at least 100 municipalities. Small single-state operators are numerous — 1,410 of 1,655 wireline providers — but together reach only 10% of residential units. Every state except Alaska is around 80% or higher.
The comments also catalog a newer problem: local franchise agreements aimed at broadband-only providers, with fee structures that bear little relation to the cost of managing ROW. New York City charges information services franchisees $0.19 per linear foot per quarter, escalating 4% annually, atop flat annual payments of at least $40,000. Pittsburgh charges non-cable, non-telecom franchisees 5% of local gross revenues; Junction City, Oregon, charges 7%. Allowing fiber in the ROW is essentially a fixed cost to a city — how much the network is used has no bearing on what it costs the locality to manage that input.
The filing closes by noting that FCC action here should be the start, not the end, of regulatory modernization: states still need to pare back legacy telecom rules and rein in unproductive actions by their political subdivisions.