In June 2026 the FCC opened an inquiry into whether the 23 states, plus DC, that regulate their own pole attachments are still doing it effectively, and what should happen if they are not. Nothing has changed yet. But this is the kind of proceeding that decides, a year or two out, which rulebook governs the poles you are attaching to.
On June 11, 2026, the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau released a Public Notice, DA 26-579, in WC Docket Nos. 17-84 and 10-101. It asks a single underlying question: are the states that took over pole attachment regulation from the FCC still doing the job the law expects?
A Public Notice seeking comment is the earliest, lightest-touch step the FCC takes. It is not a proposed rule and it is not an order. It gathers a written record from anyone with something to say, which the Commission can then use to decide whether to do nothing, open a formal rulemaking, or act on specific certifications. Comments were due July 13, 2026, and reply comments, the round where parties respond to what others filed, were due July 27, 2026, through the FCC's Electronic Comment Filing System. The practical takeaway for a builder is not the deadline. It is that the jurisdiction question you already have to answer on every pole just went from settled to under review in nearly half the country.
Section 224 lets a state certify to the FCC that it regulates pole attachments itself. Once it does, and to the extent it has actually issued rules, the FCC's rate formula steps aside and that state's own rules govern its investor-owned utility poles. That mechanism is what DA 26-579 is now poking at.
That distinction is not hypothetical, and one certified state has already been through it. Illinois certified in 1985. In December 2018 the Illinois Commerce Commission filed a notice with the FCC, unanimously approved at an open meeting that October, clarifying that it had not adopted any rules or regulations specifically governing rates, terms, or conditions for attachments by telecommunications companies to poles owned by electric utilities, and therefore lacked regulatory authority over them. In Crown Castle Fiber LLC v. Commonwealth Edison Company, DA 19-640 (July 15, 2019), the FCC's Enforcement Bureau held that the 1985 certification and the 2018 notice together showed the Illinois Commerce Commission had not exercised preemption jurisdiction over telecommunication attachments to electric utility poles, and refused to dismiss the attacher's complaint for want of jurisdiction. So on the same Illinois pole, a telecommunications carrier files at the FCC and a cable attacher does not. The question is never only whether your state is certified. It is whether your state has issued effective rules covering your owner class and the kind of attachment you are making.
If the reverse-preemption idea itself is new to you, the fuller version, including how it sits alongside cooperative and municipal poles, is in Section 224 and Subpart J, explained. The state-by-state record PoleProof works from, with the authority behind each conclusion, is published on the state research ledger.
Stripped of the procedural language, the Bureau is asking a connected set of questions about whether state control of pole attachments still does what Congress intended.
Should states update or refile their certifications with greater specificity about which pole owners and which attachments they actually regulate, rather than relying on a broad decades-old filing?
Most certifications predate the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which added telecommunications carriers to Section 224. Are those older frameworks adequate now that the statute reaches more than cable attachments?
Should the Commission set up a way to check, on an ongoing basis, that certified states maintain an effective regulatory framework, instead of treating a one-time certification as permanent?
What should happen when a state holds a certification but is not, in practice, regulating the rates, terms, and conditions of attachment the way Section 224 requires?
In that case, should the certification be found insufficient and FCC jurisdiction reasserted over that state's investor-owned utility poles, putting them back under the federal formula and complaint process?
This is the part that matters to a build, so it is worth being precise, and precise means not overstating it. If the FCC found a state's certification insufficient and reasserted jurisdiction, the poles that shift are the investor-owned utility poles in that state.
Those poles would move off the state's rate rules and back onto the FCC's Section 224 rate formula and the Subpart J timelines and complaint procedures, including the Commission's Rapid Broadband Assessment Team, or RBAT, for expedited disputes. For some builders in some states that is a better deal, a known federal formula and a faster federal forum. For others it is not, because their state rate or timeline was already more favorable than the federal one. There is no universal answer. The only way to know which way it cuts for a given pole is to compare the state regime and the federal regime side by side for that specific owner and that specific attachment. Cooperative and municipal poles, which mostly sit outside Section 224 to begin with, are a separate question this proceeding does not directly reach.
Nothing urgent, and nothing that requires filing anything. But there are three sensible moves while the record is open.
If your footprint touches any of the 23 certified states or DC, flag them. Then ask the question the certification does not answer: has that state issued effective rules covering your owner class and your kind of attachment? Illinois is certified and, for telecommunications attachments to electric utility poles, the answer is no. These are also the jurisdictions where the rulebook is under review, and where a change, if it ever comes, would land.
Nothing has changed yet, so today's invoices still answer to today's rule. Do not let a pole owner cite an unsettled federal proceeding as a reason to change a rate or a timeline now. The state rule still controls in a certified state until the FCC says otherwise.
Knowing, for each certified state you operate in, how the state rate and timeline compare to the federal Section 224 baseline is useful whether or not this proceeding goes anywhere. It is also the groundwork that makes a fast decision possible if a certification does move.
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