Verizon and a union representing its workers have reached a settlement requiring the company to fix thousands of problems in areas of Pennsylvania where it hasn't upgraded its copper network to fiber.
The settlement of the union's complaint "will require the company to repair and replace bad cable, defective equipment, faulty back-up batteries, and to take down 15,000 double telephone poles," the Communications Workers of America (CWA) said Friday.
Double poles occur when "Verizon has failed to move its equipment from an old pole that was replaced with a new one by another utility (e.g., the electric company)," the CWA said. "In many cases, these are dangerous conditions—poles are falling, leaning, rotting, partially cut off, etc."
How many double poles are in the state is not clear. The settlement requires Verizon to fix "at least" 15,000 within three years. There are also "dangling pieces of old poles" resulting from Verizon doing "everything it can to avoid the expense of moving its facilities to a new pole," as shown in the pictures above and detailed in the union's complaint against Verizon.
"When VZPA does nothing, and the electric utility must remove the pole from the base, it may leave the portion of the old pole containing VZPA facilities just dangling over the right of way, tied to the new pole by a single cable or a make-shift wooden support," the union complaint said.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:51PM (13 children)
Socializing the expenses for the sake of the bottom line.
Clearly, the splendid result of a common agreement between parties, sanctified in a holy contract, no violence is necessary.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by Revek on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:58PM (12 children)
15000 pole transfers is insane. I can't believe the company that owns them hasn't fined them.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:36PM (8 children)
The company that owns them is the local power company and the government agency that regulates pole attachments "for the greater good" as a public resource is the FCC. There is a constant dance of muni and state trying to weasel into the relationship. The muni can regulate when and where construction occurs and zone aerial or buried and all kinds of stuff. State likes to weasel into things via the PUC and escalated resident complaints. OSHA supposedly will get involved if a pole is so deteriorated that its unsafe to nearby workers, a power company tech can essentially file an OSHA complaint against a telco installation although the shit will hit the fan from a management perspective as things are supposed to go thru channels. Still if you ask a power company guy to risk his life because the telco is lazy, "sparks will fly" (sorry bad pun)
The telcos and cableco and powerco have been fighting each other in court and in FCC regs frankly continuously since day 1. AFAIK the biggest recent battles were in '11 with a minor skirmish in '15, but its continuous and if there isn't a pending lawsuit today that would be kinda historically unusual in itself.
Its worth pointing out the FCC regulates or used to regulate about fifty million poles nationwide, so 15K in one region is a drop in the bucket. If that ratio of bridges needed repair or replacement or miles of interstate were potholed we're be in pretty good shape.
The power co can kinda take care of itself, sorta. They're doing pretty well off this problem on a large scale. The amount of money the power co is making off 15K extra poles is large enough to be nice but on an individual pole basis isn't that much. The total revenue the power co is making in extra fees is about enough to hire one guy, so its measurable but not huge.
Honestly with the continuous rule changes "the way it was" in the 90s probably doesn't matter anymore but the impression I got as a distant coworker of the construction project managers was the power company bills upfront no matter when the telco gets around to connecting. You wanna connect at some point in the future, you connect when you want, but we invoice you starting today.
In the old days, audits and the resulting fees for "irregular pole connections" used to be a thing. Probably outlawed by now. Oh your pole connection is now categorized as illegal because it hasn't meet safety standards for three consecutive pole audits, oh so sorry here's a bill for $1000 per mo for an irregular pole connection until it meets standard. Probably outlawing it prevents massive levels of abuse while also permitting 15K broke poles to sit there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @03:37PM (2 children)
I'm in SE PA and I see these cut hanging poles and other similar things and wondered how/why. Gives me a cynical but sad chuckle.
Years ago a very wise insightful friend of mine suggested that all utility poles, wires, etc., should be owned and maintained by a publicly owned non-profit that would be regulated, monitored, audited, open books, etc. I suppose that would include substations, switchgear, etc. The only trouble I see is: how to incentivize them to be proactive in maintenance to reduce long-term costs. Not that corporations care about long-term costs either, but if it's publicly funded, I can imagine the workers being even lazier than present Verizon workers. I see shoddy work everywhere. How do you get people to care?
PA is a sadly backward state. Our roads are often voted the worst in the nation. We're rife with idiots.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 07 2017, @04:06PM
PA is a sadly backward state. ... We're rife with idiots.
I hate to break it to you, but your state is nothing special in this regard. This whole nation is rife with idiots and backwards states.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:43PM
Private ownership of switchgear seems to work pretty well.
I guess I feel the need to disclaim that I own stock in this company. I'm just stating the facts, so that probably doesn't matter.
I've researched the hell out of the fields I've invested in for decades and I invest heavily in energy companies mostly. I donno why other than I like them and learning about energy companies is strangely interesting niche hobby. So for a "civilian" I know a hell of a lot about power plant operations or nuclear plant fuel financing or oil refinery design or whatever. Energy infrastructure is just interesting.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:22PM (4 children)
WTF? I'm not in the US, so maybe I just don't understand, but: the FCC? Why would a federal agency be regulating poles in local communities? Seems like that ought to be the job of the local utility commission (or whatever it's called). Keep it local, then the responsible officials are in reach of the local people.
Those dangling pole pieces - insane! Those have got to be heavy, one good windstorm and they're down on a car, a house, or whatever else happens to be below.
But seriously: WTF are the feds doing, regulating local stuff? It's like your "Department of Education" that dictates what kids in local schools get to eat for lunch. That's just federal bureaucrats pissing on local communities because they can.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 07 2017, @06:15PM
> Those have got to be heavy, one good windstorm and they're down
That's the point.
Don't fix them on regular budgets, fix them on emergency state/federal funding after a storm.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:34PM
I'm not an expert on legal history of that topic but the FCC totally regulates the hell our of our broadcasters and the earliest days of cable before cable-only networks were imagined, cable was like a shared antenna system so they somehow fell into regulating that. Think of the "must carry" rules and stuff like that.
Let me know how to install aerial coaxial cable without the involvement of the power company. As a practical matter they have the monopoly and the .gov has been regulating it WRT telecom for ages before cable companies. Before this was set up, there was insanity with power poles, phone poles, and telegraph poles all being separately owned and it was quite a nightmare so its nice to just have power company owned poles. Which ironically in the USA are universally called telephone poles.
Also the FCC is already involved with unintentional radiators like power lines. So interference is already their thing.
With respect to signals being transmitted, there is no "local".
The DoEd thing is different in that for better or worse (mostly the latter) we use the feds to level budgets so the poorest districts aren't that much poorer than the better districts, and if you wanna take our money you gonna buy what we tell you... Note that the DoEd has no input on private schools or schools that don't accept federal funding. Its extortion, sorta. Whereas there's at least some logic behind the idea that the federal COMMUNICATIONS commission would regulate all forms of electronic communications.
States are smaller in the USA that some would think. Inherently its almost unthinkable to not have interstate commerce affect commercial broadcasting in the USA. In Canada I think the smallest province is still 1000 miles wide so its thinkable to "locally" regulate a radio station with 100 mile range, but the USA has states like Rhode Island which I think is about 2 miles on a side, kinda ridiculous, but whatever.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:35PM (1 child)
Two reasons that actually make some sense:
1. It allows the rules to be consistent across the country. That makes it much easier if, say, an emergency means that a lineman who is used to working in Florida all of a sudden has to come into Vermont to help with repairs.
2. Localities are often underfunded and/or seriously corrupt, and thus unable to spend any resources on relatively obscure areas of regulation.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:48PM
It would probably end up looking like the NEC where every little podunk village has a law on the books like "our electrical building code will be the NEC with the following stupid and arbitrary modifications" made to pay some local dingbat off or permit some scam. Better off doing it FCC top down style.
Probably, RF standards in general across the board pragmatically have better results with the FCC approach than building code have had with the bottom up NEC approach.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:53PM (2 children)
> 15000 pole transfers is insane.
Once again, PA seems to have problems when it comes to infrastructure. While I don't have data, we are right next door in NY and I think I've seen a dozen doubled poles in the last 50 years. Could it be the difference between fairly consistently Rep (PA) and Dem (NY) state governments? Yes, we pay higher taxes in NY, but we also get some nice things for it.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:41PM (1 child)
We have the same problem in NYC: http://www.brooklyndaily.com/stories/2017/10/all-utility-pole-legislation-2017-03-03-bk.html [brooklyndaily.com]
Plenty in my neighborhood and there is one right on my block cut at the base and tied to the new pole with rope. That pole supports the secondary lines (line voltage your home uses, e.g 120/240V), cable and phone lines. They only appear to be focusing on upgrading the primary distribution (medium voltage lines) with all new wire and hardware, smart reclosers/disconnects, transformers, and monitoring equipment. Everything else is chopped liver.
People want it all buried but good luck getting them to spend the money to bury thousands of miles of wire and equipment while also getting the cable and telcos to follow suit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @03:07PM
Sorry, should have mentioned that I'm in Western NY State. NY City is often very different than the rest of the state, on many different fronts.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:53PM (1 child)
Mergers and other financial foolishness is expensive, so if you want the New York Banks to get richer, you gotta cut somewhere, like infrastructure across the country.
Just kinda how it is.
I don't live in the area and never worked for either although I was at a utility with CWA union members a long time ago, and they're missing the point that to some extent it can be out of the companies hands. The electric company gets away with a lot of "You let us do what we want or your lights go out" but aerial fiber or in this case the telco can have the most ridiculous roadblocks tossed up. "Well, we require licensed foresters to trim the tree branches going thru your path and the endangered spotted big bird is in its nesting season so ..." "For traffic safety reasons we can only spare two cruisers to shut down the road for two minutes while you re-string the fiber on the sixth Tuesday of the Month and not when its too warm or too cold out so it'll have to be May or October" "Sure you can reroute by installing new fiber then chop and splice 96 count to the new path which will take a couple hours but there's 96 customers and the first mutually acceptable maintenance interval is 2 am Dec 24th 2097 and right now they're all screaming at sales to be the first priority on the restoration list." Oh yeah another fun one, "Uh, excuse me, hate to bring this up but your municipal license doesn't permit construction activities you need to get a permit with means paying a fee to the permit office and going to a zoning board and paying their fee just to move aerial fiber, F you we're not paying extortion taxation, OK ... we will see who blinks first and our dumpy city is broke so it ain't gonna be us" "LOL you think you're moving aerial fiber, naw dog it don't work that way, the zoning commission banned aerial cables and grandfathered in your old fiber years ago, so you can pay the zoning variance fee/tax like the electric company did which is only $1000 per event or your can spend 10x as much to trench or you can pound sand because we're the zoning commission and we DGAF about you or your fiber" Just saying I seen some stuff...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @02:17AM
Having worked for VZ. I can safely say what you said is probably not true. They did it to themselves. It took me two years to buy 1 set of servers. That was in one of the most profitable growing businesses they have. The wheels of bureaucracy in VZ move very very very slowly. The VZW side of the house they get shit done. But on the VZ side? Not so much. Their mantra is 'dont fuck with it'.