WASHINGTON, July 30, 2025 \u2013 If you want to deploy fiber in West Virginia, you better make sure that the local utility pole owners are willing to play ball.<\/p>\n
That was the message Citynet President and CEO James \u201cJim\u201d Martin II, had for<\/a> the Fiber Broadband Association on Wednesday.<\/p>\n \u201cPole attachments, by far, is the number one challenge here in our state,\u201d Martin said. \u201c…It\u2019s just been a real challenge, not only for CityNet, but for a lot of the other providers in the state.\u201d<\/p>\n Gary Bolton, President and CEO of FBA, spoke of his experience dealing with the issue.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s probably the only issue where I\u2019ve ever seen actual fights break out in meetings between lawyers,\u201d Bolton explained. Chuckling, he added that\u00a0 \u201cthey\u2019re not really good fighters.\u201d<\/p>\n Access to utility poles is a particularly contentious issue<\/a> in West Virginia. The state\u2019s rocky terrain makes it prohibitively expensive to build lines underground, and as a result, Martin estimated that 95 percent of the state\u2019s fiber lines had been attached to utility poles.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just too challenging to put it in the ground, as you know,\u201d Martin said. \u201cUnderground construction is about ten times the cost, and it\u2019s very challenging when you go to hook up customers.\u201d<\/p>\n As a result, internet-service providers in West Virginia must work with either FirstEnergy and its affiliates or American Electric Power to use their utility poles. Martin explained that in the past, that process was relatively straightforward. However, when federal dollars<\/a> for broadband service poured into the state, ISPs began attaching more lines to poles. Utility companies, worried that their poles were getting dangerously overcrowded, started to police them.<\/p>\n That effort led to numerous conflicts between ISPs and utility companies. One of the most contentious debates between the participants centered on\u00a0 who should be responsible<\/a> for preparing the pole for the attachment<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the challenges is that our poles hadn\u2019t been policed, so there’s a lot of illegal attachments, a lot of safety issues that are out there,\u201d Martin said. \u201d…At least in our territory with First Energy, their position was, \u2018Well, you know, these are problems of the past, but you’ve got all the money, so we\u2019re going to hold you to account, you need to pay for all this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Martin also spoke of delays<\/a> in getting poles ready for providers to use. However, he noted that West Virginia\u2019s Public Service Commission had been addressing the issue, and expressed optimism that the problems would eventually be resolved.<\/p>\n The conversation between Martin and Bolton ended with a discussion about the changes<\/a> to the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program. Martin was optimistic<\/a> that much of West Virginia\u2019s BEAD funding would be used for fiber.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very hopeful that our state is going to be successful in petitioning the [National Telecommunications and Information Administration] to allow us to use a good chunk of our BEAD money to build fiber out to these rural communities,\u201d Martin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON, July 30, 2025 \u2013 If you want to deploy fiber in West Virginia, you better make sure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[64,63,237,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-34364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-internet","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}