Charter Communications has filed a complaint against Verizon, saying the telco violated New York state's public service law and regulations by denying access to utility poles.

Charter is required to extend its network in New York state to 145,000 homes and businesses by May 2020 under a condition imposed on its purchase of Time Warner Cable, and it was supposed to complete the first 36,250 locations by May of this year. Charter last week was fined by New York regulators for failing to complete the first wave of construction on time, but it largely blamed its failure on Verizon in a complaint filed on Saturday with the New York Public Service Commission.

"In the face of Verizon’s intransigence, Charter has been unable to satisfy the milestones in the Buildout Condition," Charter said. Charter is the second-largest cable company in the US after Comcast.

The dispute has to do with Charter's ability to attach wires to utility poles that Verizon owns or co-owns. Charter said in the complaint:

Since the Buildout Condition took effect in May 2016, Charter has submitted 822 pole attachment applications to Verizon, requesting permits to attach to 55,856 poles—nearly a third of all of the poles that Charter needs to access in order to meet its buildout requirements. In connection with those applications, Charter has paid $409,296 to Verizon in application fees. To date, however, Verizon has approved only 179 of those applications and has released only 4,048 poles to Charter—a mere 7 percent of poles for which Charter has submitted applications to Verizon. Verizon has not conducted any pre-construction surveys for 51 percent of Charter’s applications (representing 62 percent of the poles), despite accepting Charter’s payment of application fees to pay for such work.

Charter deals with multiple pole owners and says Verizon presents unique problems. "Unlike other pole owners in the State, Verizon does not provide routine status updates regarding the status of Charter’s permit applications, further frustrating Charter’s efforts to mitigate delays in Verizon’s processing of such applications," Charter said.

Verizon defended itself when contacted by Ars today. "We have been more than cooperative and even presented Charter with options to speed up their construction efforts. For them to try to shift blame is puzzling at best. We stand ready to continue to assist them and again provide them with the methods to speed things up," the company said.

Consumers suffered, Charter says

Verizon's actions have harmed consumers who would benefit from competition, Charter told state regulators. "The cumulative effect of Verizon’s conduct has been to frustrate Charter’s ability to bring its services to additional areas in the state and offer competitive alternatives to 'bottleneck' providers—including competing against Verizon itself," Charter said.

Verizon co-owns a large number of the poles with National Grid. But Charter said that Verizon hasn't done enough work with the utility to speed up the process and that "Verizon’s co-ownership of a pole does not relieve it of its legal obligation to complete surveys in a timely fashion."

Charter says that Verizon violated a state requirement to conduct pre-construction surveys of poles within 45 days of receiving completed applications and failed to meet a requirement to perform make-ready work (i.e. moving wires) within 45 days of receiving payment. In many cases, Verizon has also failed to meet required deadlines for processing pole attachment applications, Charter alleged.

"Despite being unable to meet these timelines, Verizon has refused Charter’s requests to allow Charter to hire approved outside contractors to complete surveys and make-ready work," Charter said.

21,000 didn’t get broadband on time

Charter only completed its initial buildout to 15,164 of the required 36,250 homes and businesses on time. In last week's settlement with state authorities, Charter agreed to finish that first wave by December of this year and to get back on schedule to complete the entire buildout to 145,000 locations by the original deadline of May 2020. Charter agreed to pay $13 million, but it can get $12 million of that back if it completes the buildout under the revised schedule.

According to Charter's complaint, Verizon incorrectly claims that it is not bound by state pole attachment rules issued in 2004.

Charter asked the Public Service Commission to "initiate an expedited dispute resolution proceeding to resolve the outstanding pole attachment issues between Charter and Verizon." If such a process fails to solve the problem, Charter wants the commission to impose requirements on Verizon and use its enforcement authority and ability to impose penalties to make sure the requirements are met.

Verizon supported faster pole access

One potential solution to the pole access problem is "One Touch Make Ready," a rule adopted by some cities that lets an ISP make all of the necessary wire adjustments on utility poles itself instead of having to wait for other providers to move their own wires. Charter would benefit from such a rule in New York if there was one, but Charter sued the local government in Louisville and Jefferson County, Kentucky, to stop a One Touch Make Ready ordinance that was designed to give Google Fiber easier access to utility poles.

Verizon, which is both a pole owner and an attacher to others' poles, recently urged the Federal Communications Commission to adopt a One Touch Make Ready rule. At the time, Verizon complained, "It can take six months to a year—and piles of paperwork—to get a new attachment approved and placed on a pole."

Verizon also reportedly tried to buy Charter for more than $100 billion this year but was rejected.

Disclosure: The Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which owns about 13 percent of Charter, is part of Advance Publications. Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica.