Jeffrey Mazzella

It wasn’t long ago that Google Fiber, to great media hype and much fanfare, announced plans to launch gigabit fiber broadband networks in nine cities across the country, including Nashville.

Specifically, according to the company’s website, it would lay “thousands of miles of state-of-the-art fiber optic cable” or enough in the Nashville area “to reach from here to Canada … .” It promised to offer small businesses “upload and download speeds up to 1,000 Mbps and enough bandwidth for everyone at work and their devices.” Small business gigabit (1,000 mbps) plans would cost $250 per month while individual consumers would pay $70 for the service.

That was 2014. Times have changed and reality has set in. It is expensive to build and maintain high-speed networks, and major cost overruns and time delays have caused Google Fiber to suggest it might not complete its fiber build-out — in Nashville and in other cities around the country.

To be clear, Google Fiber hasn’t pulled out of Nashville completely — it currently offers service in a handful of luxury buildings — but it’s unclear what the status of its plans are moving forward. It does appear, however, that whatever the company’s plans are, they might be incumbent upon the city granting it a “One Touch Make Ready” (OTMR) utility pole access ordinance.

An OTMR ordinance, as Communications Workers of America’s Rick Feinstein explains, would mean Google Fiber could usurp an agreement between CWA and existing telecommunications providers and use its own employees to move infrastructure owned by other companies without their knowledge or permission. (Feinstein says the current agreement is in place to assure “proper care of our infrastructure, ensures service is not interrupted and avoids safety risks.”)

The Metro Council shouldn’t approve the OTMR ordinance. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has jurisdiction over privately held telecommunications poles. The city has no authority here. Indeed, that jurisdictional reality is the basis of a lawsuit challenging a similar OTMR ordinance just to our north in Louisville, Ky.

Making matters worse, the OTMR proposal before Metro Council erodes private property rights. Essentially, it would allow Google Fiber to move infrastructure owned by other companies without notifying them. Think about that: How would a restaurant owner feel if his or her competitor received the government’s blessing to come onto the premises and move signage or the menu that hung on the door?

Or how would a homeowner feel if a neighbor came along and uprooted newly planted landscaping or repositioned his or her driveway without permission? That’s the precedent that would be set by this ordinance.

As Councilwoman Tanaka Vercher recently noted on these pages, Google Fiber’s plea for such special treatment comes after it won fast-tracking agreements from the Metro Council, received discounted access to public land and got assurances that the city would ease the burdens associated with permitting and other infrastructure needs.

Vercher has tried to reach out to Google Fiber for answers, but incredibly, representatives of the company didn’t show up when invited to a meeting with her and her constituents.

Councilman Jeremy Elrod, who is among the OTMR bill’s sponsors, recently noted that Nashville now has 70-plus attachers, including three of the biggest telecom companies in the world. If some 70 other providers have been able to navigate the process of attaching equipment to poles, why then does Google Fiber deserve special treatment?

It doesn’t.

Council members should reject this latest regulatory handout — and any others, for that matter — to Google Fiber.

Jeffrey Mazzella is president of the Center for Individual Freedom ( www.cfif.org) and is a resident of Franklin.