Replacing copper with fiber: poles need replacing too

Hundreds of thousands of utility poles, hundreds of millions in funding and increasingly tight deadlines are part of Virginia’s quest to bring broadband to far-flung rural locations.

The commonwealth has been among the nation’s leaders in deploying internet, state leaders and observers say. But the goal of bringing universal high-speed access — with lots of federal and state money in play — is facing delays.

The latest delays center on stringing broadband fiber across electric utility poles, some of which are so out-of-date that they need to be replaced. Issues between internet service providers and pole owners include how much the work will cost and who will pay for it. 

Cost is a large part of the make-ready process and is typically the ISP’s responsibility. If a pole is outdated and must be replaced according to the National Electric Safety Code, that could ultimately be a utility’s responsibility, and a fair amount of that is going on in rural areas, Marsden said. But there is a lot of room for gray in determining who is responsible and who has to pay, and that can slow the make-ready work as ISPs and owners negotiate, McKay said.

https://cardinalnews.org/2024/01/03/as-broadband-funding-flows-expansion-projects-hit-a-low-tech-snag-utility-poles/

A major cost of updating the nation’s outdated legacy copper infrastructure designed for voice telephone service is not only replacing the copper with fiber but also the poles to which it is attached. Like the copper cable plant, much of the nation’s utility pole stock is deteriorated and at the end of its useful life.

This is a big deal because in less densely populated regions of the nation, burying conduit is cost prohibitive and prone to delay over right of way access, making aerial fiber construction on existing utility pole infrastructure the preferred option.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021 appropriated $43.45 billion in grants to the states to subsidize advanced telecommunications distribution infrastructure. That funding is targeted to these less densely settled exurban and rural areas more likely to qualify for funding as delineated in the law as “unserved” and “underserved” locations. Much of that funding could be chewed up to cover the cost of replacing old poles.

The IIJA separately appropriated $5 billion to the states for fiscal years 2022-2026 (with a 15 percent match) for undergrounding electrical equipment and utility pole management. That amount is way below what’s needed in high fire risk areas of the western U.S. where electrical utilities look to underground distribution lines to reduce the risk of sparking wildfires like those in California over the past several years that consumed entire communities and thousands of homes.

Doing so would offer a “dig once” opportunity to place fiber conduit underground instead of on aerial poles. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program set up by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to administer the IIJA’s telecom infrastructure appropriation encourages states to develop plans that utilize existing infrastructure (such as utility poles) and “promote and adopt dig-once policies, streamlined permitting processes and cost-effective access to poles, conduits, easements, and rights of way, including the imposition of reasonable access requirements.”