My understanding is that telephone, cable, and power providers share the poles. Don't the power companies usually own the poles? So if they added internet providers to the list of companies authorized to share the poles, AT&T wouldn't have grounds for complaint. Since internet providers (such as AT&T) already share the poles, this seems like a reasonable move.In my neighborhood we had 2 competing cable providers for about a decade, and they managed to share the poles (along with the phone company and the power company) without any problems (or at least, any problems that made the news).
tzs|10 years ago
I expect that this is common. The telephone system and the commercial electricity distribution system were developed at about the same time, and I believe that in many cities telephones were widely deployed before electricity. (I wonder if this is why the phone system provided its own power rather than relying on power being available at the customer premises?)