Accelerating Wireline Broadband Deployment by Removing Barriers to Infrastructure Investment

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 1</CFR> <DEPDOC>[WC Docket No. 17-84; FCC 25-38; FR ID 308629]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Accelerating Wireline Broadband Deployment by Removing Barriers to Infrastructure Investment</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Communications Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Commission adopted a Fourth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM or Further Notice) addressing deployment of broadband facilities on utility poles. It seeks comment on requiring attachers to deploy equipment on poles within 120 days of completion of make-ready work. It also seeks comment on whether the Commission should require attachers to make payment on an estimate to a utility within a specific period of time after acceptance. It additionally seeks comment on limiting the amount that final make-ready costs can exceed the utility's estimate without receiving prior approval from the attacher. It further seeks comment on whether to expand the availability of the one-touch, make-ready (OTMR) process to include complex survey and make-ready work. Moreover, it seeks comment establishing a deadline to on-board approved contractors. It also seeks comment on whether the Commission should define the term “pole” for purposes of Section 224 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, and whether the term should be construed to include light poles. Further, it seeks comment on legal authority to adopt each of the proposals as well as any other germane policy points or facts, and on how the costs, benefits, or burdens of any rules the Commission adopts might impact businesses of various sizes. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments are due on or before September 22, 2025, and reply comments are due on or before October 21, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Pursuant to §§ 1.415 and 1.419 of the Commission's rules, 47 CFR 1.415, 1.419, interested parties may file comments and reply comments on or before the dates indicated in this document. Comments and reply comments may be filed using the Commission's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS). See <E T="03">Electronic Filing of Documents in Rulemaking Proceedings,</E> 63 FR 24121 (1998). Interested parties may file comments or reply comments, identified by WC Docket No. 17-84 by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Electronic Filers:</E> Comments may be filed electronically by accessing ECFS at <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/.</E> • <E T="03">Paper Filers:</E> Parties who choose to file by paper must file an original and one copy of each filing. • Filings can be sent by hand or messenger delivery, by commercial courier, or by the U.S. Postal Service. All filings must be addressed to the Secretary, Federal Communications Commission. • Hand-delivered or messenger-delivered paper filings for the Commission's Secretary are accepted between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. by the FCC's mailing contractor at 9050 Junction Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. All hand deliveries must be held together with rubber bands or fasteners. Any envelopes and boxes must be disposed of before entering the building. • Commercial courier deliveries (any deliveries not by the U.S. Postal Service) must be sent to 9050 Junction Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. • Filings sent by U.S. Postal Service First-Class Mail, Priority Mail, and Priority Mail Express must be sent to 45 L Street NE, Washington, DC 20554. <E T="03">People with Disabilities:</E> To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities (braille, large print, electronic files, audio format), send an email to <E T="03">fcc504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530 (voice), 202-418-0432 (TTY). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For further information about this proceeding, please contact Michele Berlove, FCC Wireline Competition Bureau, Competition Policy Division, at (202) 418-1477, or <E T="03">michele.berlove@fcc.gov,</E> or Michael Ray, FCC Wireline Competition Bureau, Competition Policy Division, at (202) 418-0357 or <E T="03">michael.ray@fcc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's Fourth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM or Further Notice) in WC Docket No. 17-84, FCC 25-38, adopted on July 24, 2025, and released on July 25, 2025. The full text of this document is available for public inspection at the following internet address: <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-aims-remove-barriers-broadband-deployment-and-investment-0.</E> <E T="03">Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act.</E> The Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act, Public Law 118-9, requires each agency, in providing notice of a rulemaking, to post online a brief plain-language summary of the proposed rule. The required summary of this FNPRM is available at <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/proposed-rulemakings.</E> To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities ( <E T="03">e.g.</E> Braille, large print, electronic files, audio format), send an email to <E T="03">fcc504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at (202) 418-0530. <E T="03">Ex Parte Presentations.</E> The proceeding shall be treated as a “permit-but-disclose” proceeding in accordance with the Commission's <E T="03">ex parte</E> rules. Persons making <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations must file a copy of any written presentation or a memorandum summarizing any oral presentation within two business days after the presentation (unless a different deadline applicable to the Sunshine period applies). Persons making oral <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations are reminded that memoranda summarizing the presentation must: (1) list all persons attending or otherwise participating in the meeting at which the <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentation was made, and (2) summarize all data presented and arguments made during the presentation. If the presentation consisted in whole or in part of the presentation of data or arguments already reflected in the presenter's written comments, memoranda, or other filings in the proceeding, the presenter may provide citations to such data or arguments in his or her prior comments, memoranda, or other filings (specifying the relevant page and/or paragraph numbers where such data or arguments can be found) in lieu of summarizing them in the memorandum. Documents shown or given to Commission staff during <E T="03">ex parte</E> meetings are deemed to be written <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations and must be filed consistent with rule 1.1206(b). In proceedings governed by rule 1.49(f) or for which the Commission has made available a method of electronic filing, written <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations and memoranda summarizing oral <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations, and all attachments thereto, must be filed through the electronic comment filing system available for that proceeding, and must be filed in their native format ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> .doc, .xml, .ppt, searchable .pdf). Participants in this proceeding should familiarize themselves with the Commission's <E T="03">ex parte</E> rules. <E T="03">Regulatory Flexibility Act.</E> The Commission has prepared an Initial Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (IRFA) concerning the potential impact of rule and policy change proposals on small entities in the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. The Commission invites the general public, in particular small businesses, to comment on the IRFA. Comments must be filed by the deadlines for comments on the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking indicated on the first page of this document and must have a separate and distinct heading designating them as responses to the IRFA. <E T="03">Paperwork Reduction Act.</E> This document may also contain proposed new or modified information collection requirements. The Commission, as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork burdens, invites the general public and OMB to comment on any information collection requirements contained in this document, as required by the PRA. In addition, pursuant to the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002, Public Law 107-198, see 44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(4), we seek specific comment on how we might further reduce the information collection burden for small business concerns with fewer than 25 employees. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Introduction</HD> 1. The Federal Communications Commission is focused on expanding access to high-speed broadband services. One way the agency is delivering on that goal is by accelerating the buildout of next-generation infrastructure. Today, we continue our infrastructure efforts by promoting fast and efficient deployment of broadband facilities on utility poles. As the Commission previously noted, access to the vital infrastructure of utility poles must be “swift, predictable, safe, and affordable, to ensure that broadband providers can continue to enter new markets and deploy facilities that support high-speed broadband.” And as more and more consumers rely on mobile wireless services to access broadband, pole access becomes increasingly essential for the small wireless antennas and wireline backhaul on which these wireless services depend. 2. The Commission has taken significant steps in recent years to expedite the pole attachment process, but there is more work to be done. We seek comment in the Further Notice on ways to further facilitate the processing of pole attachment applications and make-ready to enable faster broadband deployment and, in response to a Petition for Declaratory Ruling fi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 172k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━