Nashville’s major Internet providers meet privately today at the request of Mayor Megan Barry. Their task is to find a quicker way to expand high-speed service. But to do that, the companies may need to hash out the surprisingly complicated process of attaching wires to utility poles.
The arrival of Google Fiber — and the endeavor to attach wires to 88,000 poles — has stirred up the issue. The problem is that Google, AT&T and Comcast don’t agree on the rules that govern those poles.
As the companies have been doing it, each one scoots its lines over, one at a time, in order, on separate trips, before Google can get on.
So the newcomer says only a few dozen poles are complete after 5,000 work requests — and that by the end of the year, Google projects 1,000 ready poles and 21,000 in waiting.
The company supports a council proposal — “One Touch Make Ready” — that would let a single work crew adjust all the wires on one visit.
“The bottom line, in my estimation, is we have a broken system when it comes to deploying fiber on our poles,” said Metro Councilman Anthony Davis, who is sponsoring the bill.
The one-touch concept sounds simple. But the other telecom giants say the current process is designed for safety and to make sure that service isn’t interrupted.
A Comcast representative told the council it doesn’t trust that its equipment would be handled with care by third-party contractors.
And AT&T — which is doing many installations for Google on a contract basis — argues that the real causes for delay are that Google keeps creating inaccurate work orders and sending crews to individual poles that are widely scattered.
“This is not a process that is needlessly complex,” said AT&T Tennessee President Joelle Phillips. “It’s a process where people can get hurt when things aren’t done correctly. Service gets interrupted.”
Google has said it may cancel its Fiber rollout if the pole process can’t be streamlined. The Metro Council is scheduled to take up the issue again on Sept. 6.
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