2 ms·

I remember in North Atlanta a huge problem to competition was access to utility poles. Comcast and other entrenched monopolies preventing companies like Google

• dboreham 9y ago
  I'm guessing "it depends" on the locality but in general there's nothing magical about being an entity that can sling cable around the town on poles. There are already typically two providers doing so (besides the electricity utility) : phone and cable tv. If you want to you can start a company and do it too, if you live by their rules, man. Rules include things like using qualified people to attach stuff to poles, be insured appropriately, other kinds of "government over-regulation" stuff, and of course that there be space available on said poles. In our very small town there's a retail store that has their own fiber between two of their locations. I suspect they contracted its installation to one of the regional fiber maintenance and installation companies. That's probably how you'd do it too unless you like owning bucket lift trucks and being on-call to come out and repair fiber when someone drives into a pole. Now, in some cases the city has issued a "licence" to a provider to deliver some service city-wide (e.g. cable tv). That agreement might include some non-competition provisions, on the basis that said provider spent $$$ installing their system and is only willing to do that if they are guaranteed to not have competition. This might be viewed as "not allowing access to poles" even though it actually isn't.