TO:  FECA Managers and Engineer listservs. 

As you may be aware, ATT is pursuing legislation to regulate pole attachment charges when they attach to a pole owned by DOT or a local government.  Apparently some cities are trying to charge $1,500 per year to attach to non-utility poles and ATT wants to mandate a reasonable cap.  Even though co-op (and IOU) poles appear to be excluded from this legislation, we are very concerned because it would for the first time reference the FCC rates for pole attachment charges and also cap charges at $15.  In addition, we anticipate that ATT also will want to attach this equipment to our poles and may seek modifications to your pole attachment agreements, and if that doesn’t work come back to the Legislature to include co-op poles.  A summary of the bill is below.  The specs for the equipment that ATT wants to put on power poles is attached.  ATT has reached out to us and is willing to address any NESC, engineering standards, or other issues that we have with their proposed standards.  To this end I would like your feedback ASAP on any issues that you have with the attached specs.  Note that the device appears to require a secondary voltage power source, so for poles with no transformer it would require secondary or a service drop and a metering point.  We are aware of the concerns with having their equipment in the hot zone, but if someone can articulate the specific code and other concerns with hot zone issues I would greatly appreciate it.

Wireless Companies and Pole Attachments - SB 596 by Sen. Hutson (R) would limit the FDOT and local governments’ (“authority or authorities) ability to regulate “small” wireless facilities in public rights-of-way when the wireless facilities attach to authority utility poles.  The authorities would issue permits and require the wireless entities to provide information on the collocation similar to the information required for electric utilities.  The bill would set rates and fees in statute for attachments on authority poles that may not exceed the lesser of the FCC pole attachment rate or $15 per year.  This is concerning since municipal electric (and cooperatives) pole attachment rates are not subject to the FCC formula and the $15 rate is not cost-based.  The bill would set a new standard with respect to permissible cubic feet of volume of the antenna and associated facilities.  The antenna could be up to 6 cubic feet with associated equipment up to 28 cubic feet, excluding certain ancillary equipment.  The authority would only be able to charge the wireless entity the actual cost, with certain limitations, for any additional work on authority utility poles necessitated to support the additional facilities.  The bill would not apply to electric co-ops.  However, the bad precedent set by this bill could be troublesome in the future.

Bill Willingham
Executive V.P. & General Manager
Florida Electric Cooperatives Assn.
2916 Apalachee Parkway
Tallahassee, FL 32301
(850) 877-6166, ext. 1

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