The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Frontier resolves dispute with broadband upstart
Frontier Communications reached a legal and regulatory settlement with a smaller rival it had accused of stringing fiber optic cable on its poles without permission.
The Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Commission approved on Wednesday the agreement between Norwalkbased Frontier and GoNetspeed, which has been installing cable over the past few years on utility poles managed by Frontier and United Illuminating in portions of the Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford areas.
In tandem complaints filed in New Haven Superior Court and to PURA, Frontier had accused Rochester, N.Y.based GoNetspeed of affixing cable to poles without express authorization to do so.
GoNetspeed is the newest startup from Frank Chiaino, who four years ago sold Fibertech Networks for $1.9 billion after installing and operating more than 3,000 miles of fiber optic networking infrastructure in parts of Connecticut as well as New York and other states.
In Connecticut, GoNetspeed is now marketing in its words “freakishly fast” broadband service at rates ranging from $50 a month for 150 megabits per second capacity, to $90 monthly for gigabit service. The company maintains an online database at www.gonetspeed.com/Residential to allow people to check for availability in their neighborhoods.
Over the past several months, Frontier has begun rolling out its own fiber optic service in Connecticut, with Vantage Fiber having 200 megabits a second capacity and priced at $75 when bundled with a TV package.
Universally in Connecticut, Frontier currently lists a 115 megabitspersecond service for $45 that uses the historic copper network it inherited from AT&T.
In its original complaints, Frontier had warned that in addition to flouting Connecticut’s protocols for attaching cable to poles, GoNetspeed in some instances had chosen poles that were already overloaded with wires, creating safety hazards. At the time, Frontier also indicated GoNetspeed had not remitted fees owed in exchange for approval to attach lines.
PURA has an open inquiry on overloaded poles in Connecticut, with Eversource Energy, United Illuminating and Frontier having doubled up poles in some locations to accommodate the weight and space required by more lines and equipment, and PURA responding to municipal complaints by mandating a reversion to solitary poles with sufficient size and strength to hold up to the strain.
In testimony last spring, a GoNetspeed attorney told a PURA committee that the company ran into delays from Frontier in getting approvals processed. It was not uncommon for Fibertech to rely on temporary attachments to run cable to Connecticut customers in advance of formal permission from utilities for permanent attachments, he added.
“There’s no provision in the code that prohibits it,” said Charles Stockdale, general counsel for GoNetspeed and before that Fibertech. “It’s common industry practice to use a ‘Jhook’ to attach customer service drops — and it’s a necessary step to use if you’re going to attach equipment to a pole before you have any guidance from the pole owners as to where their permanent attachment will be.”