‘Number-one obstructionist’: Electricity co-ops lambasted for slow broadband rollout

More than a billion dollars worth of government incentives to boost rural Hoosier broadband access could get tangled in the utility pole attachment fight between Indiana’s electricity providers and telecommunications companies—prompting a major potential amendment and several hostile exchanges at a committee hearing. “For three years of my life, I have been trying to get the utilities and the telecoms to agree,” the committee’s frustrated leader, Rep Ed Soliday (R-4), began. “… And so, we now are here.” “The loser in all of this is the rural person who needs broadband,” he said. “… I’m going to give out phone numbers of who to call when they come to me and say their children are going to McDonald’s to do their homework.” Senate Bill 502 is lawmakers’ attempt to mediate.  For now, it would require telecommunications companies to “prove to you that there is a problem,” AT&T Indiana President Bill Soards told a corresponding Senate committee in February. His and other companies would submit information on their attachment requests to the Indiana Broadband Office quarterly until July 2030. But a detailed amendment from Soliday, would strike the reporting requirements and instead set deadlines to push both provider types toward collaboration—or face the consequences.