You build onto a pole once. You pay rent on it for as long as you stay. The rate is not a price off a list: it is a formula applied to a count, and either half can move between one invoice and the next. Here is what the rules build a rate out of, and what to read on the bill that applies it.
Attachment rent is the recurring charge a pole owner bills for the space your line occupies on its poles. It is a different bill from make-ready, which is the one time cost of getting onto the pole. Make-ready ends when the build does. Rent runs for as long as you stay up there.
Most published material on pole attachments is about the first bill. Pew’s March 2025 infographic, What is the pole attachment process?, says of the arrangement as a whole that “This process has several steps, and the regulations that govern it vary by state and type of pole owner.” Its four sections are the overview, the application, make-ready, and attaching the fiber. Read end to end, they cover getting onto the pole and stop there. Nothing in them addresses the rent that begins once you are up, which is the part of the arrangement that recurs for the life of the network.
That is the gap this page is about. A rent rate has a structure, the structure is written down, and knowing it is what lets you tell a rate that follows from your agreement from one that does not.
Paragraph (d) of 47 CFR 1.1406 opens: “The Commission will apply the following formulas for determining a maximum just and reasonable rate”. Two things follow from that one word. The rule sets a ceiling, not a price. And a rate under the ceiling is not thereby the rate you agreed to pay.
Your share is the space you occupy over the space that can be occupied at all. The FCC presumes 13.5 feet of usable space on a 37.5 foot pole. Oregon arrives at usable space a different way, and gets a different number.
47 CFR 1.1410 presumes an attachment occupies one foot, and says these presumptions “may be rebutted by either party”. A presumption is a starting point, not a measurement of your attachment.
The telecommunications formula brings in a share of the unusable space. 47 CFR 1.1409(a) fixes that share at “two-thirds of the costs of providing unusable space that would be allocated to such entity under an equal apportionment of such costs among all attaching entities”.
Oregon defines it as the sum of five percentages. The federal rule names a Carrying Charge Rate and, in paragraphs (d) and (e) of 1.1406, does not enumerate what goes into it.
There are two federal formulas, not one. The cable formula at 1.1406(d)(1) reads “Maximum Rate = Space Factor x Net Cost of a Bare Pole x Carrying Charge Rate”, where the space factor is the space occupied by the attachment over total usable space. The telecommunications formula at 1.1406(d)(2) is a pair, and the rule says “the maximum just and reasonable rate shall be the higher of the rate yielded by paragraphs (d)(2)(i) or (d)(2)(ii)”. The first of the pair multiplies the space factor by a Cost that steps with how many entities are on the pole: at five attaching entities it is 0.66 of the net cost of a bare pole times the carrying charge rate, at four 0.56, at three 0.44, and at two 0.31. The second multiplies the space factor by the net cost of a bare pole and by what the rule calls a Maintenance and Administrative Carrying Charge Rate.
Both halves of the telecommunications space factor are numbers somebody chose. The number of attaching entities is counted. The space occupied, the usable space, the unusable space and the pole height are presumed under 1.1410, and 1.1410 says those presumptions “may be rebutted by either party”. A rate is therefore an argument built out of quantities, which is why it is worth reading rather than filing.
The federal rule multiplies by a Carrying Charge Rate and does not say what it is made of. Paragraph (d) of 1.1406 gives the formulas, paragraph (e) deals with which accounting data a carrier may use, and neither enumerates the components. The only component the federal text names on its face is inside the second telecommunications formula, which multiplies by a Maintenance and Administrative Carrying Charge Rate.
Oregon’s rule does enumerate it. OAR 860-028-0020 defines a carrying charge as “the costs incurred by the owner in owning and maintaining poles or conduits” and says it “is expressed as a percentage”, then sets out the percentages that are added together. The five below are from that rule, and they are the clearest published statement of what a carrying charge is for.
“total general and administrative expense as a percent of net investment in total plant”.
“maintenance of overhead lines expense or conduit maintenance expense as a percent of net investment in overhead plant facilities or conduit plant facilities”.
“the depreciation rate for gross pole or conduit investment multiplied by the ratio of gross pole or conduit investment to net investment in poles or conduit”.
“total operating taxes, including, but not limited to, current, deferred, and ‘in lieu of’ taxes, as a percent of net investment in total plant”.
Calculated differently by owner class, against an authorized rate for a regulated utility or a debt based measure for others.
Read the list and the point of this section is visible: four of the five move with the owner’s own books. A rate can rise because a pole owner spent more on maintenance, or because its net plant investment fell, and nothing about your attachment changed at all.
Because the inputs move, and because many agreements say in terms that the rate is recalculated. The Eugene Water and Electric Board, a municipal utility in Oregon, publishes its joint use fees to its own board. Its pole attachment agreement provides that “The rates for attachments will be recomputed annually using the formula that follows”, and the formula that follows is the space occupied over total usable space, times net investment in poles per pole, times a carrying charge.
The board memo of May 7, 2024 that proposed the next update records that the joint use fees “were last updated in May 2023 with approval of Board Resolution No. 2310” and that they “are typically updated annually”. Its Table 1 shows two rates, not one, and shows each of them moving.
Notice what that table contains besides a price. There is a rate class. An invoice can apply the right formula, the right inputs and the right count, and still put you in the wrong class, and the published rates would both be correct while your bill was not.
Movement is also something a rule can regulate without preventing. Oregon requires that “The owner must provide notice to the occupant of any change in rental rate or fee schedule a minimum of 60 days prior to the effective date of the change.” That is a right to know in advance, which is only worth something if somebody reads the notice when it arrives.
Rent is a rate times a count, plus whatever else travels on the same invoice. Three of those four can move while the rate sits still, and the covering letter will usually mention only the rate.
Inventories, field audits and permit reconciliation change the number of poles you are billed for. A count is a measurement somebody took, on a date, by a method. It is the half of the bill least often explained and most often different.
Under Oregon’s rule the rental rate does not include “the costs of permit application processing, preconstruction activity, post construction inspection, make ready work, and the costs related to unauthorized attachments”. Those are billed in addition, “based on actual costs”.
Where an owner publishes a compliance and a non-compliance rate, moving between them changes what you pay while both published figures stay exactly where they were.
A correction is dated to the cycle it belongs to and arrives in whatever cycle the owner issues it. Where a rate is found unjust or unreasonable on a complaint, 47 CFR 1.1407(a) lets the Commission “Order a refund, or payment, if appropriate”, measured against what would have been paid, plus interest. Corrections run in both directions.
Section 224 lets a state take the job over, and when one does, the arithmetic changes with it. The same words can carry different numbers in the state next door, which is why a rate cannot be checked against a remembered formula.
Start from your own agreement rather than from the formula. The formula explains where a number could have come from. The agreement is what decides whether you owe it.
Compare this cycle’s billed pole count with the previous one and with your own records. A difference is a question, not a finding. Ask which poles were added and on what date.
Does the rate follow from your agreement’s schedule or its formula, and are you in the class the agreement puts you in? Both have to hold.
A rate that changed mid cycle should be prorated on the dates the agreement names, and a notice period, where the rules give you one, runs from a date somebody can produce.
Inspections, permit processing, make-ready and unauthorized attachment charges are separate things with separate bases. Read each against the agreement clause it is charged under.
Each should name the period it corrects and the reason. A correction without a period is not yet checkable.
A pole billed twice and a pole billed after you removed your attachment both look exactly like ordinary lines. They are found by comparison, not by reading.
This page explains how pole owners and the rules they work under build a rate. It is not a statement that PoleProof applies those rules. For recurring rent, what an audit reads an invoice against is your agreement and the invoice before it.
Rent audits are coming soon. Make-ready audits and monitoring are open now. There is no rent intake today, so this page does not send you to one. The plans page sets out how each engagement is priced and counted, and the methodology page sets out what an audit checks and where it stops.
PoleProof is not a law firm and this page is not legal advice. It is general information about published rules. Whether a rule applies to you, and what to do if a pole owner disagrees, are questions for your own counsel.
Each source below was opened and read before anything on this page was written. Where a document could not be opened, nothing on this page rests on it, and that is recorded here too rather than left out.
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