Accelerating Wireline Broadband Deployment by Removing Barriers to Infrastructure Investment

<RULE> FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 1</CFR> <DEPDOC>[WC Docket No. 17-84; FCC 25-38; FR ID 308601]</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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, a <E T="03">Fifth Report and Order</E> adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) establishes rules ensuring greater collaboration and cooperation between utilities and attachers, establishing a timeline for large pole attachment requests, revising and improving the pole attachment timeline, and establishing a deadline for the contractor approval process. In addition, the Commission denies in part and grants in part a Petition for Clarification and/or Reconsideration from the Edison Electric Institute of portions of the Commission's December 2023 <E T="03">Fourth Report and Order, Declaratory Ruling, and Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.</E> Finally, the Commission denies a Petition for Reconsideration from the Coalition of Concerned Utilities of a portion of the <E T="03">Fourth Report and Order.</E> </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective September 25, 2025, except that the amendments to §§ 1.1403(b), 1.1411(c) through (k), and 1.1412(a) and (b), (e) of the Commission's rules, which may contain new or modified information collection requirements, will not become effective until the Office of Management and Budget completes review of any information collection requirements that the Wireline Competition Bureau determines is required under the Paperwork Reduction Act. The Federal Communications Commission will publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> announcing the effective date. </EFFDATE> <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> For additional information concerning the Paperwork Reduction Act proposed information collection requirements contained in this document, send an email to <E T="03">PRA@fcc.gov</E> or contact Nicole Ongele at (202) 418-2991. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's <E T="03">Fifth Report and Order</E> 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://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-25-38A1.pdf.</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. <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. Today, we take further action to advance the goal of ubiquitous high-speed broadband by revising our pole attachment rules to eliminate barriers to efficient broadband deployment by building on the work begun in the Commission's <E T="03">December 2023 Fourth Report and Order, Declaratory Ruling, and Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.</E> Specifically, we adopt rules (1) ensuring greater collaboration and cooperation between utilities and attachers, (2) establishing a timeline for large pole attachment requests, (3) improving the pole attachment timeline, and (4) speeding up the contractor approval process. We also 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 filed by CTIA, seek comment on whether light poles fall within the purview of Section 224(f) of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (the Act). We then deny in part and grant in part a Petition for Clarification and/or Reconsideration from the Edison Electric Institute of portions of the Declaratory Ruling. Finally, we deny a Petition for Reconsideration from the Coalition of Concerned Utilities of a portion of the <E T="03">Fourth Wireline Infrastructure Order,</E> 89 FR 2151 (Jan. 12, 2024). <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> 3. Section 224(f) of the Act requires that utilities provide cable television systems and telecommunications carriers with nondiscriminatory access to their poles. (For purposes of this statutory provision, “utility” is defined as “any person who is a local exchange carrier or an electric, gas, water, steam, or other public utility, and who owns or controls poles, ducts, conduits, or rights-of-way used, in whole or in part, for any wire communications.” Railroads, cooperatives, and federally- and state-owned entities are expressly excluded from this definition. The term “pole attachment” is defined as “any attachment by a cable television system or provider of telecommunications service to a pole, duct, conduit, or right-of-way owned or controlled by a utility.”) Section 224(b)(1) of the Act requires the Commission to set the rates, terms, and conditions for pole attachments to provide that such rates, terms, and conditions are just and reasonable. (Note that Section 224(c) of the Act exempts from Commission jurisdiction those pole attachments in states that have elected to regulate pole attachments themselves (so-called “reverse preemption”). To date, 23 states and the District of Columbia have opted out of Commission regulation of pole attachments in their jurisdictions.) The Commission has rules intended to ensure nondiscriminatory pole access and just and reasonable rates, along with a robust complaint process to ensure that our rules are enforced. 4. <E T="03">Pole Attachment Process.</E> Attaching equipment to utility poles is a multi-stage process. In the first stage, the utility reviews the pole attachment application submitted by the communications attacher for completeness. In the second stage, the utility must determine whether to grant the complete application (review on the merits) and undertake a survey of the poles for which access has been requested. In the third stage, the utility must prepare for the attacher an estimate of the cost of preparing the affected poles for the new attachments. In the fourth stage, utilities (or the existing attachers, if they want to move their own existing equipment) perform the work to make the affected poles ready for the new attachments (also known as “make-ready” work) and then the new attachers deploy their equipment on the poles. The make-ready stage is the most time-intensive stage in the pole attachment process. (Make-ready is defined as “the modification or replacement of a utility pole, or of the lines or equipment on the utility pole, to accommodate additional facilities on the utility pole.” There are several different kinds of make-ready. Complex make-ready refers to “transfers and work within the communications space that would be reasonably likely to cause a service outage(s) or facility damage, including work such as splicing of any communication attachment or relocation of existing wireless attachments. Any and all wireless activities, including those involving mobile, fixed, and point-to-point wireless communications and wireless internet service providers, are to be considered complex.” Simple make-ready is “where existing attachments in the communications space of a pole could be transferred without any reasonable expectation of a service outage or facility damage and does not require splicing of any existing communication attachment or relocation of an existing wireless attachment.” There also is make-ready above the communications space on a pole, typically involving work either in the electric space or at the pole-top.) 5. <E T="03">Existing Timelines.</E> The Commission's rules set forth deadlines for each stage in the pole attachment process. A utility has up to 10 business days after receiving a new attachment application to determine whether it is complete. (If the utility timely notifies the new attacher that its application is not complete, it must specify all reasons for finding it incomplete, and any resubmitted application shall be deemed complete within 5 business days after its resubmission, unless the utility notifies the attacher of how the resubmitted application is insufficient. The new attacher may follow the resubmission procedure as many times as it chooses so long as it makes a bona fide att ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 234k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━