“The juice isn’t worth the squeeze”: NRECA’s Jim Matheson on pole attachments and BEAD

Pole attachment requirements added late in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program rollout have become a sticking point for electric cooperatives, already pushing some out of the program. Under the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) revised terms, an electric cooperative that accepts BEAD funding for any part of its territory becomes subject to Federal Communications Commission pole attachment rates across its entire service area, not only the funded portion. National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) CEO Jim Matheson said the BEAD provision marks a sharp break from decades of federal policy and is one reason several cooperatives have decided the program is no longer worth pursuing. Matheson said that of the 62 electric cooperatives that initially qualified for BEAD funding, nine have dropped out. He attributed the departures to a mix of frustrations, including delays, rising costs, and the pole attachment requirements, and said some were tied specifically to the pole rate issue. “The juice isn’t worth the squeeze,” he said, “Nine out of 62, to me that’s a significant number.” Electric cooperatives have long been exempt from FCC pole attachment regulation under Section 224 of the Communications Act, which caps the rates pole owners may charge companies that string broadband lines and sets deadlines for processing attachment requests. Cooperatives set their rates locally, and Congress preserved the exemption in recognition of the sparsely populated, hard-to-serve areas co-ops typically cover. Matheson described the BEAD condition as a complete 180-degree reversal of that long-standing policy, and said the exemption exists for a reason. Cooperatives, he said, operate in “the most difficult, hardest-to-serve, most sparsely populated areas in America,” where he argued a formulaic approach to pole attachments does not fit.