Comcast files complaint in Appalachian Power Company pole attachment dispute

Comcast Cable Communications has filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Bureau that claims that the Appalachian Power Company is not complying with the FCC’s order on pole attachment pricing in Virginia. The conflict focuses on the $126 million grant to Comcast from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. The service provider is to provide broadband to approximately 13,000 unserved and underserved locations in the commonwealth. Comcast needs access to APCO’s poles in order to fulfill its obligations. Some of the poles have safety violations that must be remediated. APCO had been charging 20 percent of the total replacement cost of a new pole on attachers seeking access. The complaint says the FCC put a new pricing scheme in place and that APCO is disregarding it. The new rule, the Comcast complaint says, is a system in which new attachers only pay the incremental costs of deploying a pole that is high and strong enough to eliminate the violations.