James Granelli of the Los Angeles Times has written an excellent article about how local electric utilities are blocking the deployment of municipal wireless broadband networks: “As cities across the nation roll out their own wireless Internet networks, some Southern California communities are hitting an unexpected bottleneck: Southern California Edison Co.”James Granelli of the Los Angeles Times has written an excellent article about how local electric utilities are blocking the deployment of municipal wireless broadband networks: “As cities across the nation roll out their own wireless Internet networks, some Southern California communities are hitting an unexpected bottleneck: Southern California Edison Co.”
Diamond Bar in the greater Los Angeles area has been sitting on plans to deploy citywide Wi-Fi for almost a year:
“We’ve had almost a full year of discussions with Edison that haven’t really gotten us anywhere,” Desforges said. “They’re always very friendly and they’re not saying no, but they’re not moving forward either.” The closest Edison could come to a resolution, he said, was to suggest that the city could pay what cellphone carriers pay to attach antennas to utility poles ‚Äö?Ñ?Æ as much as $2,000 a month per pole. MetroFi, in contrast, said that it pays other utilities an average of $36 a year per pole.
Read the following articles on the delays in Oakland County and Toronto:
Utility pole access delays $100M Wi-Fi Project
Toronto street light problem (and they own the poles!)
[...] Via MuniWireless, an LAT story on an unexpected problem with rolling out muniwifi in Southern California: the electrical utility wants its several pounds of flesh: “We’ve had almost a full year of discussions with Edison that haven’t really gotten us anywhere,” Desforges said. “They’re always very friendly and they’re not saying no, but they’re not moving forward either.” The closest Edison could come to a resolution, he said, was to suggest that the city could pay what cellphone carriers pay to attach antennas to utility poles — as much as $2,000 a month per pole. MetroFi, in contrast, said that it pays other utilities an average of $36 a year per pole. [...]
They should simply take their issue to the FCC which created the formula for pole attachments. I think the key issue is unmetered power.
[...] Corona is not far from Diamond Bar, which recently complained that Southern California Edison has refused to cooperate with the city’s plans to deploy a citywide Wi-Fi network (SCE owns pole rights). In Municipal Wireless Posted Friday, August 11, 2006 [...]
[...] West Covina is looking for a vendor to build, own and run a citywide wireless mesh network to cover 17 square miles (44 square kilometers). The city is located 18 miles east of downtown Los Angeles and has 123,000 residents. The city will use the network for residential and business access, as well as municipal operations (public safety, code enforcement, asset management and traffic systems). Although the city owns a number of light poles for mounting mesh nodes, the vendor will have to negotiate with Southern California Edison for rights to mount on SCE’s poles (see this article on SCE’s less than enthusiastic response to Diamond Bar’s (a nearby city) muni Wi-Fi plans). [...]
[...] In addition, the consortium will have to negotiate with Duke Energy, the local utility that owns rights to the light poles. We’ve already seen how several muni Wi-Fi projects were stalled by the local electric utility’s lack of enthusiasm. We will see how quickly this project gets underway. [...]
[...] gets underway.  No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTMLallowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> [...]
I believe the CPUC can bring to bear its weight in the fray. SCE received a franchise agreement from the state and a reciprocal deal at the city level. Such provides certainty in the non-competetion area, as well as the right of way. Since the attachements cause neither loss or damage, the municipalities should be able to encourage SCE to share access to the assets at a reasonable price. At the end, I believe they are waiting for the viable BBoPL solution and stalling is a prime practice to discourage and keep competition away.
[...] Why am I picking out these particular clauses? Because electricity utilities have been blocking other cities’ efforts to set up citywide Wi-Fi. This may not be a problem for EarthLink in SF if there are not that many PG&E poles or if PG&E decides to play nice. [...]
[...] Completion¬†deadlines could be problematic for any contractor who does not secure rights to city light poles in advance of signing a city agreement or negotiate a hold-harmless clause if Toledo Edison proves to be less than cooperative. We’ve already seen delays in Los Angeles and Toronto due to disinterest on the parts of utility companies. Click here to read our earlier report on the problem. [...]
[...] This seems to suggest that a contractor should secure rights to city light poles in advance of signing a city agreement or attempt to negotiate a hold-harmless clause if Toledo Edison proves to be less than cooperative. We’ve already seen delays in Los Angeles and Toronto due to disinterest on the parts of utility companies. Click here to read our earlier report on those difficulties. In Municipal Wireless/Bids Posted Monday, January 22, 2007 [...]
There is definitely nothing like that in the UK. Electricity suppliers stay away from Broadband. THere is too much of competition from telecommunication companies.