FCC sides with Google Fiber over Comcast with new pro-competition rule

Enlarge / Boxes of equipment needed to install Google Fiber broadband network sit on a couch at the home of customer Becki Sherwood in Kansas City, Kansas. (credit: Julie Denesha/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The Federal Communications Commission today approved new rules that could let Google Fiber and other new Internet service providers gain faster access to utility poles.

The FCC's One Touch Make Ready (OTMR) rules will let companies attach wires to utility poles without waiting for the other users of the pole to move their own wires. Google Fiber says its deployment has stalled in multiple cities because Comcast and AT&T take a long time to get poles ready for new attachers. One Touch Make Ready rules let new attachers make all of the necessary wire adjustments themselves.

Comcast urged the FCC to "reject 'one-touch make-ready' proposals, which inure solely to the benefit of new entrants while unnecessarily risking harm to existing attachers and their customers."

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