No Fiber in Mountain View an Internet Desert

[dane]

Yes, unfortunately the City of Mountain View “allows” construction of fiber, but not the placement of safety bypass poles. Because there are 112 unsafe poles there today, this policy effectively stops any deployment of new fiber by Sonic.

The City requires instead that we wait until PG&E replaces or repairs the poles, which could happen any number of years in the future. And we won’t be unformed if and when that finally does occur, PG&E doesn’t notify anyone who has been “waiting” because nobody is supposed to wait, the standard process is to set temporary safety bypass poles until PG&E fixes theirs. The irony is that setting a temporary pole starts a shot clock for resolving the safety issue, versus denying us which means there is no deadline for resolving the existing safety issues there. Wear a hard-hat when you walk your dog, I suppose!

Sorry for the unfortunate news.

We are working now the cut down the project to a smaller segment of the City, in hopes we can at least build some portion of it where the poles are safe.

[fmc]

Is there some reason Sonic can't set temporary safety bypass poles when the unsafe poles are in the way of stringing fiber?

[dane]

Is there some reason Sonic can't set temporary safety bypass poles when the unsafe poles are in the way of stringing fiber?

That’s the normal process, and it is a routine and essential part of aerial construction. It’s set out as part of the CPUC’s standards under General Order 95, aerial utility line construction. Because at any point in time there will by a small percentage of poles that are unsafe, and the CPUC doesn’t of course allow additional new load to be added to an unsafe pole. And because a “lead”, or sequence of poles is all a single engineered structure, a single bad pole among hundreds would stop a project, if a safety bypass pole cannot be used. Placement of the temporary pole triggers a shot clock for PG&E to repair the unsafe pole.

But a number of cities have recently realized that they can block competitive fiber broadband deployment by disallowing the placement of temporary safety poles. The motive for this remains unclear to me, the only explanation that I’ve heard being aesthetic concerns about the temporary pole.

We are engaged in advocacy with various cities to try to get past this new issue, but many have dug in. This and related City permit issues has been the leading cause of delays and totally stalled projects over the last eighteen months.

[fmc]

Having got into Mountain View you may have worked out that sometime about 50 years ago they got somewhat into burying utilities. Which means that there are older residential areas with poles, and newer areas with buried utilities, and some areas where I think formerly aerial utilities were buried. It's kinda patchwork and I sometimes think that where I live on the UFC banana road is kind of an island of aerial utilities surrounded by buried utilities.

If you try to re-develop a property you may be made to advance this agenda:

(1) neighboring property to the north of where I live (on the UFC banana road) was another small apartment building until the mid 1990s when it was redeveloped as several two-story single-family mini-mansions and while the utilities are still on poles along the street they are brought into these mini-mansions through underground boxes not overhead cables

(2) across Villa at the north end of UFC banana road is a former Superfund site which has is said to have been remediated and has been redeveloped into a multi-story rental called "The Tillery" with a new and maybe as-yet-unnamed public park out front, and along the front of that property the overhead utilities (which include AT&T fiber) have been buried

But you may not: if you knock down a single-family home and build a new two-story single-family home on the property, the utilities will not only remain on poles out front but you will be allowed to re-connect to the poles with aerial cabling!

Anyway, I suspect that the city's buried-utilities policy is one of the things that drives their behavior: they don't want to replace poles, policy is that utilities should be buried!

[fmc]

From the Shoreline West Association of Neighbors Newsletter:

City of Mountain View Broadband Survey
The City of Mountain View is conducting a study of internet availability, access and affordability as part of a citywide broadband needs assessment. The City is seeking to gather first-hand information through the survey to improve household and business access to high-speed and affordable internet service. The survey link is:
https://www.mountainview.gov/our-city/d ... assessment

Went most of the way through it and then got to Question 23.

23. Would you like to receive more information about broadband and related services and technologies in your area?Let us know who you are and how to reach you. This information will be considered confidential and will not be shared with any other parties.

Who is behind this? I'm sure they would like to tell me that AT&T and/or Comcast and maybe Verizon (yes I have received something in the mail from Verizon about their 5G service) offer "broadband and related services and technologies" and "in my area". Anyway I gave 'em an e-mail address to find out.

[rbd]

Who is behind this? I'm sure they would like to tell me that AT&T and/or Comcast and maybe Verizon (yes I have received something in the mail from Verizon about their 5G service) offer "broadband and related services and technologies" and "in my area". Anyway I gave 'em an e-mail address to find out.

You're quoting from the survey that the City of Mountain View themselves is doing, right? So it must be the city that is behind it — it sounds like they are trying to make sure that everyone who wants it has home internet.

[shiyingzheng]

We are working now the cut down the project to a smaller segment of the City, in hopes we can at least build some portion of it where the poles are safe.

Has the plan been settled? If so, would you be able to share which area of the city is getting fiber?