Last month, while discussing the essential tools for a fiber optic installer, we concluded that with so much of the new cable plant installations being aerial, a bucket truck might be the most essential tool. That assumes the cable plant has been designed and all the permits for pole attachment are ready. That’s a big assumption.

Before you can begin an aerial installation, there are a lot of steps—“hoops to jump through” may be a better turn of phrase—you have to take to prepare. And I don’t mean training, buying components or having the right tools. The steps I am talking about are probably more appropriately handled by a legal team.

Before you can touch a pole, you need a permit and permission from the owner and probably the local or even federal authorities. Over the last decade, the expansion of fiber optic networks has led to what I call “The Pole Wars.” Incumbent service providers have been reluctant to allow their poles to be used by new competitors and have employed the permission process to delay projects.

There are two aspects of this, granting permission and preparing the pole for new cable installation, that may be covered by local laws or regulations and can be used sequentially to delay projects. The federal funding programs for broadband have made these issues the subject of FCC regulations.

FCC rules

The first of these regulations dates to 2019 when the FCC released new pole attachment rules known as one touch make ready (OTMR). OTMR had two provisions. One allowed the installer to do their own “make ready;” they did not have to wait for the pole owner to inspect and prepare it for new cable installations. The second codified the process of “overlashing,” where new cables could be installed over current cables on a messenger without asking for the approval of others that had cables already installed.

I’ve discussed OTMR several times in ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR (see “Hurdling the Obstacles, December 2018, and “Clean Up After Yourself,” April 2019), so you might remember my skepticism about the sensibility of this, considering the obvious quality of aerial installations that anyone can see by just looking up. My other concern is whether anyone is looking at the weight being supported by a single messenger. I’ve seen installers adding an 864-fiber armored cable to a bundle of around 10 cables near my office. I doubt they considered whether the messenger could support the additional weight of this heavy cable.

The second FCC ruling became official this summer after three years of due process. It sets rules for the pole attachment process that require expedited processing of pole access applications, new restrictions on access costs and disclosures from pole owners intended to facilitate broadband deployment. The FCC established a team to mediate disputes. These rule changes will certainly make it more difficult for owners to delay or stifle installation of new broadband or backbone fiber optic projects.

These are only summaries of the FCC rule changes. There are, as always with regulations, lots of paragraphs of support information that a project manager and probably the contractor needs to be familiar with. I never offer legal advice; I leave that to the legal team.

Standards and safety

Once we get into installation, two more issues rise to the top of the concern list: standards and safety. Safety is the simpler one—rely on OSHA regulations. Everybody working on aerial installations should be OSHA trained and certified. Not only are you working off the ground and probably operating a bucket truck, but you are generally working in the telecom space below live electrical wires. (See “Aerial Fiber Optic Installation” in the May 2023 issue of ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR.)

Standards for aerial installations are an interesting topic. Depending on your point of view, there are either none or too many. None because there are no industry-wide standards for aerial cable from the modern era, but plenty written by various utilities and agencies. Standards committees have shown little interest, probably because it would take years to research, write and get standards approved. I’ve been sent to the BellCore/Telcordia Blue Book, but that is decades old. One purported standard for aerial deals with installing poles and messengers and appears to be copied from telco manuals from the 1930s.

When it comes to installing aerial cables, the bottom line is what I learned from working with the National Electrical Code and NEIS standards—install in a “neat and workmanlike manner.”

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