The pole owner controls what is attached.. There may be pole attachment agreements you can review, but depending on the distance and complexity of the route and how many poles may need upgrades the costs still sound a bit high, but maybe they're all much taller poles. A pole itself costs $800 to start for a 32' delivered, but you need someone with a truck crane, which also requires a crane license to set it. Figure a few people at $25-35/hr as well to prep and repair the ground and you can see why it's a big cost.

I'm a fan of one touch make ready rules, but when you get to rural areas many of the poles are old, and to get the 18' clearance on a road span requires moving everyone else up, which may mean a new pole.

Interesting, thanks for those details. I thought the whole point was to be cheaper/easier than HDD, at these prices, why not just drill?

that's what i did. there also are not poles the whole way, so with some drilling, it's easier to just drill the whole way. plus if someone digs it up, i can go after them for repair costs.. hard to go after a tree for a wind/ice storm.

I sometimes think the US functions as a giant experimental ground for the rest of the world to learn in which domains a combination of capitalism and devolved regulatory authority (which seems to drive rapid innovation) works and also DOESN'T work :-)

We've had fiber to home for years now in the East. Largely driven i think by governments seeing this was one area where it didn't work.

The politicians are paid off by big Telcos looking at you ComcastNbcUniversal. So much so cities and suburbs have laws on their books that they deal with only a single internet provider. Politicians and their empty talk of ‘competing with other countries in terms of technology infrastructure’.

The East also has this:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/45/eb/48/45eb48b4c51715abecdf...

Somewhere in the middle is probably a happy medium.

Yup that's capitalism and LACK of regulatory authority :-)

That’s an example of government failure, not a failure of capitalism. The government is banning the easy installation from competitors.

And who is it that lobbies the government for favorable laws and treatment?

Almost like we... Live under a system that rewards and encourages that behavior.

Cronyism exists in all political systems. Doesn't matter whether it is a monarchy, dictatorship, socialist democracy, federal republic - it's always a concern.

But, cronyism is not capitalism. It's actually a subversion of capitalism.