Frontier: ‘Chaos’ in rival’s Connecticut fiber rollout
In approving this month an upstart broadband carrier’s plan to expand its territory in parts of the New Haven and Hartford areas, Connecticut regulators did so despite a Frontier Communications complaint that the smaller rival had been installing equipment on utility poles since last summer without explicit permission.
GoNetspeed has been spooling fiber optic cable in select Connecticut neighborhoods, including Bridgeport, as well as Pittsburgh, Pa. Rochester, N.Y.based GoNetspeed is touting its fiber-optic service as an alternative to established broadband providers such as Frontier, Charter Communications and Cox Communications, particularly for “cord-cutter” households looking to try out emerging TV platforms like Hulu that are offered over the internet independent of traditional cable TV packages.
To differentiate itself, GoNetspeed has pledged not to raise prices for residential customers for the lifetime of their contract, including if they move within its service territory. In Connecticut, the company’s packages start at $50 a month and range upward to $90 for a gigabit per second of broadband capacity.
The Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority approved last week a GoNetspeed expansion to run 44 miles of fiber optic cable in West Hartford and more than 15 miles in New Haven, overriding a protest by Norwalk-based Frontier that GoNetspeed failed to seek Frontier permission to attach cable to poles the telephone company coowns with with the United Illuminating electric subsidiary of Avangrid.
Frontier sued GoNetspeed in November seeking an unspecified amount of monetary damages, with a trial date scheduled tentatively for the summer of 2020 and no court actions having occurred since midMarch. GoNetspeed had sought without success a court-ordered stay of the lawsuit pending the PURA decision.
In its approval last week, PURA stated GoNetspeed followed an approved precedent established in 2009 by Fiber Technologies Networks “that routine fiber installations” on utility poles in public rights-ofway are exempt from notice and consent provisions otherwise required under Connecticut law. PURA nevertheless made its approval conditional on GoNetspeed getting proper approvals going forward.
The first week of May, a pair of Frontier engineers laid the case that GoNetspeed came up short in past opportunities to do just that, otherwise in a joint written response to PURA questions in the wake of a Frontier complaint on GoNetspeed’s installation activities. Among other points, they said GoNetspeed pushed ahead on its own in the New Haven area with pole attachments, in some cases over Frontier’s own cables, and they had not seen a company pursue a course like GoNetspeed in their two decades-plus in the business.
“Frontier had no dispute with (GoNetspeed) until (it) began attaching its facilities to Frontier’s poles without authorization in mid-2018,” stated Joseph Aresco and David St. Martin, who hold engineering and construction roles with Frontier. “There are a number of issues with unauthorized or unlicensed attachments . ... If all attachers in Connecticut did what (GoNetspeed) is now doing, the pole system would be in chaos.”
In an email response to a Hearst Connecticut Media query on Frontier’s testimony, GoNetspeed’s in-house attorney termed GoNetspeed’s actions “correct and justified,” while declining further comment in light of the ongoing litigation. In the PURA proceeding, GoNetspeed had complained that Frontier had allowed some of its poles to become overloaded with cabling, some of that wiring Frontier’s own.