25 August 2017 Maine Public Utilities Commission 18 State House Station Augusta, ME 04333 michael.r.johnson@maine.gov RE: Docket No. 2017-00183, Commission Initiated Inquiry Into Amendment of Chapter 880 Dear Public Utilities Commission: The members of the Islesboro Broadband Committee (Page Clason, Roger Heinen, Vern Ziegler, Arch Gillies, Janet Anderson) are writing to share the following points from the perspective of a municipal project. The Town of Islesboro is building a municipally owned fiber Internet access network. The network will reach all properties in our town and will be operated by a contracted third party. We are currently in construction approaching the end of make ready. Town of Islesboro Construction of Islesboro’s municipally owned fiber broadband Internet system is nearly complete. This has been a four year journey in which time we’ve overcome numerous hurdles. The challenge is enough to prevent many small municipalities from even attempting to meet the needs of their citizens. The biggest obstacles to expanding broadband Internet access to all corners of Maine are an extreme lack of funding, ambiguous access rules, and an abundance of obstacles for attaching to the poles. The rule change bringing clarity to the processes for service providers to attach to poles and streamlining pole access is perhaps the biggest opportunity the state has for moving our state forward. Even though this does not bring funding, it can remove significant unnecessary costs and attract new investors. The MPUC has the ability to provide a more open playing field for many different sorts of providers encouraging innovative financing models to flourish. With this, the people and businesses of Maine have significant opportunities on the horizon. Municipal Entity The people of Islesboro recognized that Internet access is necessary for maintaining and strengthening our ability to sustain a year round community in a State with a highly seasonal economy. It is also necessary to provide a global platform of opportunity to our people. We realized our low population and rural location meant business models currently used in the state would not enable providers to solve our access problem. So it was for the public good our Town took on the significant challenge of bringing broadband Internet to our people. We explored many variations of public private entities before accepting that a municipally owned network was the best value for the Town and one likely to succeed in the current regulatory environment. Reaching that decision point was a challenge in itself. From that decision point on we’ve faced even higher levels of uncertainty regarding whether or not we would be able to have access to the poles and bring the project to a successful close. Common Space We felt we should be authorized to put our fiber on poles in the common space though some providers feel otherwise. The uncertainty of whether a municipality can use this space for fiber for Internet access exists. To avoid certain delays, proceedings, and/or lawsuits we reluctantly opted to gain access to the poles solely through a pole attachment agreement with the pole owners. The strawman rule strikes the language around common space which means the municipal opportunity in this space would be eliminated. This access is a value that was based on the municipality giving service providers a right of way. This important value should not be eliminated. It certainly should not be dismissed without negotiating the value back to those who are providing the right of way to service providers. Some service providers opine a municipality providing fiber for Internet access in the common space is a competitor and should be treated as such. For that to hold true there must be more than an open ended suggestion that service providers may someday build modern Internet access in the community. Once a municipality determines they are left to their own capabilities for getting appropriate service needed by the people and businesses in their community then existing providers should be given a clear period to provide a binding commitment to build service suitable to meet the needs of the community as expressed by the community. If no providers will make that commitment the municipality is clearly not competing with anyone and is simply meeting the needs of the public good. Municipalities provide the public right of way enabling service providers to serve the communities. This arrangement was started long ago and perhaps it’s time for the arrangement to be modernized to accommodate modern communication needs. The ability of municipalities to use the poles in the right of way, which they’ve provided to the pole owners, seems to have evolved into an unfair balance. Releasing common space rights without anything in return is a change significantly in the wrong direction. Unlit Fiber While exploring for the best business model for Islesboro’s needs it became clear that simply being able to have access to the poles was a significant challenge. We settled to gain access to the poles through a multi-party pole attachment agreement. We had virtually no say in the terms of the agreement. The standard agreement offered by the pole owners has been used for years and solidified through legal challenges. Any changes to the agreement would likely be resisted, would take time, would have legal expense just to negotiate, and could end up in the courts. The municipality had no leverage to negotiate and could not accept the uncertainty of the options thus we could only accept whatever was offered. Among other concerns we have few protections for controlling our assets. LD406 addressed this with definitions for “Unlit Fiber”, “Information service” and “Telecommunications service” providers. This is a significant step forward for municipalities or entities wishing to make the infrastructure available for a third party to operate. Islesboro fits this “unlit fiber” definition. To help avoid confusion the MPUC should clarify the additional text “…excluding the electronic equipment required in order to render the fiber capable of transmitting communications.” The Town of Islesboro owns all the infrastructure, including the electronics, though we don’t turn the electronics on. We’ve contracted with GWI, a professional ISP, to turn on the devices, operate, and maintain the network. The strawman rule change makes no mention of this potential discrepancy. For clarity the MPUC must clarify that owning the electronics does not in any way exclude an entity owning but not operating the network from being an Unlit Fiber Provider. Particularly when as in our case the electronics owned by the Town are “dark” to us and lit only by the contracted service provider. Clarity with this issue will accelerate more investment opening the way for more of Maine’s rural people and businesses to have broadband Internet access. The strawman rule change makes no mention of how current projects which are underway or trying to get underway while the rules are changing will be handled. This can cause further delays as entities wait for the uncertainty to clear. We need clarity with respect to how unlit fiber providers’ authorization to be on the poles, resulting pole rates, and MPUC oversight might change. The strawman rule change makes no mention of what will be required for the commission to order joint use of equipment for Unlit Fiber, Information service, or Telecommunications service providers. The rule must be very prescriptive providing a simple process for a quick order for joint use of equipment. Elimination of the uncertainty of an entity’s ability to attach and fall under the predictable rules is critical for investors to step in enabling entities to take on the challenge of solving Maine’s lack of modern Internet access. One Touch Make Ready A one touch approach is an area for incredible opportunity. Getting crews to Maine’s make ready sites requires many weeks of planning and waiting simply to get to a schedule. Even once scheduled, weather or other events beyond our control cause delays for crews to finish unrelated projects in distant locations. These uncontrollable and unpredictable events cause cost increases in our project with no ramifications for the make ready crews of the pole owners. This is an opportunity for new service providers which is obviously good economic development. It has the added benefit of allowing existing crews to be cross trained and outfitted to handle all aspects of make ready on the poles. Preserving old jobs, bringing new jobs, and building networks faster and cheaper is an obvious win. An approach such as one touch is particularly pertinent for our rural location. Crews cover large areas to keep the costs affordable. Islesboro has had to wait weeks for specialized equipment capable of putting poles in ledge to become available. Having independent crews available who can subcontract to various efforts is a way to increase availability to limited resources. And, these crews have to cover large regions which is a challenge for scheduling of crews of the pole owners. The challenges of specialties, distances, and timing make it exponentially harder with more providers as they all need to coordinate to follow one another through the process. If a one touch approach can’t be realized, scheduling requirements should be aggressively explored to shorten construction periods. Easements Easements are another opportunity for eliminating redundant, expensive, time consuming efforts required for the new attacher. The original pole owners had to get easements to put in, use, and maintain the poles and other plant. It would be expedient if appropriate access rights passed from the pole owner to a new attacher renting space on the pole. The Islesboro project, in approximate numbers, will connect 670 properties via 1800 poles. This required us to obtain 230 easements for poles that already have easements. To the extent the MPUC has authority to do so, it should reduce this duplication of effort. Public Access to Pole Information Data on pole locations and related details is something pole owners and attachers have to track for their own operations as well as for accountability to rate payers or shareholders. Our requests to pole owners for access to this information were denied causing us further expense and delay. The Islesboro project stalled for several months while we hired surveyors, at an additional $50,000 cost, to gather data sufficient for an engineering design accurate enough to gain voter approval of the project. Given the municipal annual budgeting cycle this could cause achieving funding to span a year for municipal projects. In that delay, resource availability, costs and materials change causing yet more uncertainty. Pole information should be available also for accountability of pole owners to municipalities for revenue purposes. Clearly this is not the domain of the Commission but there is relationship. For years our Town has been collecting property tax on the reported approximately 1,300 poles. Through our pole survey we learned there are over 1,800 poles in our community. The Town updated these numbers while preparing this year’s tax commitments which meant an adjustment of approximately $20,000 of additional tax revenue. These funds can contribute significantly to cover the costs of starting broadband projects. Some opine that pole information is proprietary information. Pole information is in plain sight in public ways. Anyone walking down the road can see the pole numbers and conditions of the poles. Our surveyors gathered all the information with no special permissions, tools, or skills. Increasingly tools such as Google Earth allow viewing of large areas of infrastructure. Keeping this information private appears to be more of an obstruction than anything else. If data were to be kept in a central repository, funding to support such an effort could come from prospective attachers. Spending $10,000 for the pole data would be a bargain offering significant savings in time and money. Time Frames & Schedules The time constraints on make ready are currently far in favor of the pole owners and other dominant parties. Especially if Maine is not able to deploy a one touch approach to make ready, we must aggressively explore and implement new schedules to allow projects to proceed cost effectively and predictably. With large distances to travel to reach rural distances for the smaller projects in rural Maine, we must innovate and endure the pains of change to significantly reduce the delays in the make ready effort. Rates Clearly rates need to be understood for new projects to get started on solid footing. We strongly encourage the MPUC to give every effort to include rate adjustments in this rule change rather than delaying for a future date. This is particularly true with respect to make ready costs which represent such large proportions of project costs. And, with the municipal projects, a fixed cost is necessary for gaining voter approval of funds. A Prescriptive Approach Pole owners wield the majority of the power with respect to entities attempting to gain access to the poles. This power influences the entire process from investigating opportunities on through maintaining deployed plant. The more prescriptive the rules are, the faster we’ll see new broadband access deployed to Maine’s businesses and people in our rural State. The processes to build broadband networks in Maine currently include excessive amounts of uncertainty. This rule change is a welcome step forward. We all want to see the State of Maine progress out of 49th position in the nation for broadband access. Taking a strongly prescriptive approach to rule modernization is one of the best ways to accelerate innovation in approaches and the building of a modern infrastructure reaching all corners of our State.