PG&E's bid to be a fiber company gets a long review

15 July 2017 by Steve Blum
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PG&E will have to explain how it manages requests from telecoms companies to hang cable and other equipment on its utility poles, as the California Public Utilities Commission reviews its application to become a fully certified, commercial fiber network operator. After a meeting with PG&E and the companies and organisations that have raised objections to PG&E’s move, the administrative law judge, Jessica Hecht, and the commissioner, Liane Randolph, handling the review laid out a year-long review schedule that identifies the issues that will be addressed.

Among them is guarding against the possibility that PG&E will use its control of utility poles to put competing telecoms companies at a disadvantage. PG&E is being required to disclose…

  • Internal policies and procedures for reservation of space in and on PG&E support structures, and include forecasts for future reservation needs, if any, to accommodate its anticipated telecommunications services.
  • Statistics showing the mean and median times PG&E currently takes to respond to requests for access to its support structures, and for completing any rearrangements required to accommodate other attachers’ attachments.

Other concerns include how PG&E will split the money it makes from its planned fiber business. Some of the objectors want most of it to be funnelled back to electric customers, presumably in the form of lower rates, while PG&E is proposing a 50/50 split of fiber profits. Several of the topics under review have to do with how PG&E will keep a relatively unregulated telecoms unit separate from its highly regulated energy business, including maintaining security and safety standards, and avoiding cross-subsidies between two very different kinds of enterprises.

In general, PG&E will have to provide a lot of details about its fiber business and operations plans to the CPUC, although some of that information will likely be kept confidential.