Technology policy summit. ■ [background noises] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] well, this is thanks very much to my panelists for being here today. Since this is tv, i want to point out todays panel really is a spinoff of last years panel we did exact same time on broadband deployment. We had one or two questions on full attachment with this you were spending it offnto its very own panel we had one of the stars of last years panel. [applause] todays more than joni and shoji. Anyway, thank you all for being here and for sticking around and being part of todays summit. Youve heard a lot about taxes over the day youre going to this is an important issue for a number of our members. And frankly theres a lot that has happened even in the trust the last three months. Honestly at the end of last years of panel i could have said join us at next year time, same bat channel. The truth is we have actually seen some modest changes to the pole atthment rules we wanted to walk you through some of those today. We wanted to do it by telling the story our members have from their own opportunities and interest in terms of their own broadband deployment. I am thrilled to be joined by a number of worldclass builders today. If i could have each of you, well start with you franc little bit about yourself, tell us about your company and then tell us about the interest you have and pull a and in deployment. And ceo of dobson fiber we are regional Fiber Broadband provider in the state. We are in the process of building about half a million over the last five years. Leveraging art network. We are owned by a private equity infrastructure fund. Then about 600 million of capitol we are in oklahoma to bring broadband to communities. Obviously the cost for passing we are very familiar with it. Obviously getting access to the infrastructure in these markets is key to our ability to can ans effectively as we can. We have some great partnerips p. Someone once told me do they make Good Neighbors . We have a set of rules we live by. Whats good for them is good for us. Nationwide provider of shared infrastructure we owned about 40000 miles, 90000 route miles of fiber at one or 15000 small cells contract. We offer a variety of communication services. We lease our towers to communicatn cetera. Art small cell and fiber business having access to. Like the other providers here we have a line attachment one thing the ground is a little bit differently as we offer the small cell infrastructure to attach and tennis and fiber is the most efficient way to deploy. These have been used for a think about the telegraph and telephone, longdistance and the fiber they continue to serve an essential function for our business. It is crucial to have access to th infrastructure terms and conditions. Im cheap innovation officert provider. Ive been in this space a long we have found when the process does work, it works well its a very costefficient way to deploy fiber. And our interest in attachment policy is relatedhe cost of deployment and a leveraging existing infrastructure to deploy it at better cost. We see that is so important in the world space of our state every dollar we can save it allowsus to go further into a mt further into the rural underserved homes. ■9 its incredibly important to serve the underserved. If youre here earlier you heard commissioner carr. You heard about the battles of last year in terms of action on the Commission Last year you walked us through what they were considering. Adopted in december its order, declaratory ruling. It was probably the most monumental pole attachment policy shift we have seen since the 2018 order these things do not come along very often we like to celebrate our winds at. It was four years in the making. It was initiated in 2020 and how they can be allocated. We got this in december 2023 are brought a little bit of a cheat sheet because are so many elements of the order. A declaratory ruling in the proposed rulemaking will go to those in order. In the report and order they adopted a new accelerated process for determining pole attachment disputes. Intraagency task force evaluate disputes if its repeating or d. Think of that something is not a purely racist get your fibers up on the pole its preventing from reaching those thats a crucial modification to the dispute rules. The second thing was requiring utilities to disclose a cyclical or periodic expection reports upon the request of a new attacher. You submit a request within 10 Business Days that is most recent for the set of poles are asking to apply to utilities have to retain these reports until the next intervening report comes out. The declaratory ruling has modified the commissions understanding of what it means to have a red tagged pole this is crucial. The way this proceeding was going we really wanted to find a better Cost Allocation for when in attacher is paid to replace replaceable because in our view what we are seeing as we are paying for almost one and a of the cost of the replacement bowls the utility ultimately owns a pole. These two clarifications in the declaratory ruling one is saying a red tagged pole lack of capacity for lack of attachment to■ead t a pull up to the utility. And it also said the utility failing to red tagged aole has a safety violationi deteriorated or has been identified the other clarifications clarifying or when apole is not necessitated e to seek him out the list be proud be here until tomorrow. Its not when its necessitated by the attachment of the new attacher. There was a bit on requiringn7 utilities to require copies of easement information practicing a new attacher cannot share or has to get their own easem qt. At there is an easement underlying the pole. It also clarified when you submit a large order that has over 3000 or about 5 of the utility poles within a given state. This first 3000 the final bit of this order was he further proped will makssion is seeking comment on four additional changes to its rule. The first concerned that large so those orders over 3000 poles are 5 of upon the state, the commission is allowing an extra 90 days for the timeline under which the pole owner has to approve or deny those applications. Should we prohibit a utility for imposing a limit on application size . Are folks taking advantage of the selfhelp provisions . Are the issue of contractor availability when you are employing selfhelp . Notify the survey work and should the commission make it easier for a new attacher to get contractors approved . A number of important clarifications, new rules and the fcc asking questions about further notice. I want to get your reactions to that. Will this help you, further enable you to access poles were there areas the Commission Left to som he would like to take action out in the future . Whats it really is important to us is to use some perspective we currently have 100,000 poles we Submit Application for. Is, youe having to go in and negotiate with that looks like. Much understaffed. You might be looking at one individual thats handling joint use. You are not only in a situation where they just dont have the staff to process these applications. The second pieces once i start processing the applications in processing the appli■ations in it is kind of a blank check. He goes to the survey and get an invoice and pay what you pay. And then the timino an issue there. I think adding the timeline requirements effectively the cost gets passed on to us anyway for processing fees and so forth and so on. W anyway. We have actually done a version of selfhelp with our utili and our footprints a hydro version. We start to interact directly with Engineering Firm to perform the surveys. I think theyre sort of eight middle ground here. You talk about the utility interested in . Theyre interested in safety that is what you always here. Youve got to make sure youre up to codes, all of those things. If we can invoke selfhelp you have contractors from the serving side of the group by the utilities that are using tools with the engineering turn provio to theutility and were fully transparent. We get to control the timeline for it we control the resources, we control the money versus being an open checkbook. The same thing on the Construction Side that gets to be a little more tricky because what happens there is you have hurricanes or ice storms which■■ then theres a shortage of poles and conductors and a lack ofr. I think those two things if we the timeline you can selfhelp. We dont want to be heavyhanded we want firms approved by them and we can negotiate injury beat transparent with them and i think everyone wins. With they want is to get us out of their hair as quickly as possible so that this sort of accomplishes that goal from all of us. We definitely want to be appreciative to the fcc and all their work on this issue. It has come a long way and ipase it helps the industry get to where we are today. But you know me and some people know me here. I always have a few complaints about everything. [laughter] suggestions, suggestions. This, for us especially we are a small to mediumsize operator. It is the david and goliath situation. You have a small operator trying to deal with a billiondolr utility its extremely challenging issue. Is not a Small Company by any means. But you have similar issues. And so while i can appreciate all of the work i think the ability, we will see what the bat how that works in it that is effective. We have seen in previous processes to be very ineffective for us we are an informal we just dont have the time frankly or the resources to i complaints. We were talking in the hallway this part of to explode. We have all of this money coming into the industry that we n we need efficient ways to deploy it. This has to be part of the process. If we dont get it and for that reform this process quickly we are going to really collide with all of this money. K to be done yet. I think francisco mentioned the blank check issue. Kind of missing from the latest order which i thought the fcc would connect with we put it in the commons elite worked with it encompasses an economic where you incentivize through we are getting there we move from a cost because her argument now we have a grandfathering argument. But this idea where we need to incentivize through sharing of costs. Theseies to make the right arguments of safety and reliability. We understand that part we want that for our communities if you look at the full spectrum of pull owners the utilities over here without certain economic incentives work against you. They dont have to pay anything they are going to charge as much as possible to keep you off the pole if you go on the other side you have municipalities that are very invested in the community and often are some of the easiest to work with. And somehow theyre not neat less interested in safety and reliability but somehow you can attach you dont have the massive complex engineering processes that you have at the the fcc would work on making sure its engineering costs that benefit the utilityr pole replacement cost if they are sharing in those costs that will be the incentive that would bring the utilities owner processes into more of a realistic safety and reliability scope. Moving that in the middle through economic means is a suggestion that was missed. The grandfathering process they have moved their argument you have to pay everything to it is you have to pay for everything. It is a bit of a loophole there. Its kind of a reliable state at the time it was built and it was never touched up or 30 years therefore its very unfair argument its hard to we believe the grandfathering collects on to china back to you have put it forward■ methodoloy for polar placement the newest developments. W would they like to see the Commission Consider when they look at further notice in the selfhelp. Other areas that are open you like to see. Go in the comment cycle was open trying to emulate a non monopolistic market would look like. This really owned only one network of poles we need to attach to them. The owners are essentially a monopoly. We end up having rules and restrictions control the behaviors the study in a competitive market what would that look like and how much would each party be paying in a competitive market . The fcc did not take that out. Cable was pushing that as well. I think we got a lot with the red tagged definition and with the clarification on when a pole replacement is not necessary by the no further notice the contractor issues contractor approved. The utility may have a list its only two contractors who. They are using both contractors both contractors a lot of work for the utilities, the do a little work for us. They do not have any motivation to work with us especially given if we are employing selfhelp the utilities of artemis their deadline we are in this space where we are going out without approval by the rules allow it but the contractors are more reticent to do that. The issues the fcc terms of larger order timelines, additional contractor we think they should build a qualified within a set period ofe so they are not sitting in limbo. I think some of those issues are really important in terms of the Cost Allocation i think were going to see what we can the se. I think will probably get into this we are defending dirt to sever for recons attacking the commissions reasoning my name is on so my name is in a lot of the competition. Defendis order, opposing the petition and looking at those issues the fcc is teed up into further notice or what were going to focus on this year. Is going to say todays panel has the title holding the line its not meant the pole holds a lien on the way. It really is how do we protect and so to the group, you know, where are all of you on these . Obviously, going to oppose each of these petitions i think all of you on the same page why is it important for the commission to reject to reconsideration and hold the line on to the attachment rules . It was interesting the fcc adopted this where they release drafts of their orders before they vote on them had is relatively new phenomenon so this draft came the like thanksgiving day, i want to say and so you have a short period of time in which you can go to talk about the draft. And then when it was adopted in december, you know, it was voted out by the full mission it was interesting at the full commission committing commissioners were saying we never felt the attachment could be a contentious issue so you know, the the bit about the cyclical inspection reports disclosed, the utilities were going in included and between thanksgiving and christmas, were saying actually the commission should adopt this. This is great. Were really happy with this. Like in washington you know that youve gotten sort of a middle result or sort of the center of the road result if no one is happy th the order but in this case, cable and telecom attachers were asking to do more and the utilitie guys should just vote this out as it is. So we think that the, you know, there were some improvements from the draft that wasko relead in november to what was ultimately adopted in december as a result of, you know, an industry push to improve the fcc order. But the Disclosure Requirements were so limited in terms of the transparency that theyre requiring of just strange to see complaingts about them now because the fec and we asked for Cable Companies asked for improved transparency any information that you have about the poll that were applying if you already keep it in your normal course of business then just disclose it to us. And so fcc adopt bit more conservative. And they said if you, you know, if they keep a cyclical inspection report they have to disclose that. We think thats a modest improvement over the status quo, and we would like to see that protected. You know, i think, you know, the utilities are saying well the information the report is not useful to you anyway and out of date, and it will you know, increase amount of to be second guessing us and probably in some cases we will be. Through that you know [laughter] so anyway, you know it is something that we want to defend. I think what well sort of see if those reports are of the limited utility that theyre claiming. But you know were going to defend what the fcc adopted. To daniel askted to give you an opportunity to come to the defense of of any opposition to some of the with reconsideration. I understood reporting so forth and so on to market matters. So if you were to ask mehaost is volume of polls, timelines, you know, if we have to go in there and hire a firm to do the make readd control a time line were not subjected to application and polls per lix and how to manage that flow with the u not work ie order to priorities to me thats the most important thing to us at this point. Because we just you know, were under you know we have to get a hundred thousand passings a year, and so theres not, you know, we have paralysis by analysis we have to move so so real we cannily i would agree with the point of we dont need to go backwards to getting data that was limited amount of data we need more data and idea that utility kangt go, us, you know, the metadata of polls that was a little disappointing that we couldnt get that about and so you know, we dont need to go backwards from the bare minimum so beyond that like the overarching policy effort is to bridge divide and this is an important part of that process and you more we have a significant amount of taxpayer money that has to be deployed efficiently and this is one way to do it so those policy issues together should be you have in to reject any arguments that this has gone too far it should be going the, you know, further im glad you brought that up daniel because with all of this federal funding coming, you know, the commissio. Other half of the story is the state, states are allowed if theyre reverse prestate to come with framework for polls where are the states on this . And what kind of work needs to be done with the states to ensure that their full attachment rules are either better or at least match the commissions attachment rules . You know we found that s usually the most preemption states so in the district of columbia that dont follow the fcc rules on polls and reverse preempt fcc come up with their own rules typically from the Public Service commission, and many have done so and many are currently looking at their rules to make sure by the governor on Broadband Office making sure that theyre ready to roll out that broad banding investment that states will be receiving from otherthere are still a disg number of states that like you know, reverse preempghted in 96 never did anything afterwards so they may not have specific rules and may not have clear deadlines so when were operating in that environment, we cant, you know, we dont have the negotiating leverage with a mo