State research record

North Dakota pole attachment rules, in writing and dated.

Who regulates the pole you are attaching to in North Dakota, what rate standard applies, where a dispute actually goes and whether cooperative and municipal poles are covered. This is the record we work from, published so you can read it yourself.

Record dated October 5, 2026 · not certified under Section 224(c) · 7 authorities cited
The record

North Dakota

North DakotaND

Not certified under Section 224(c)Record dated October 5, 2026
Cooperative poles
No. Cooperative poles are outside state pole regulation, and the exemption is wider than the statute book, which is the trap in this state: the general definition of public utility is keyed to the business rather than the ownership form and carries no cooperative carve out, so a reader working from the definitions alone would wrongly conclude a cooperative is inside. The attachment agreement is the whole of the governing law.
Municipal poles
No. A municipal or other political subdivision electric utility is outside state pole regulation, and that limb of the exemption was not narrowed by the amendment that narrowed the cooperative limb. It is outside the federal statute as well, so the agreement governs.
Rate standard
No state rate standard on any pole for any attacher. There is no state formula, ceiling, tariff or benchmark. On an investor owned electric or telephone pole the FCC cable and telecommunications formulas apply unqualified, because the state never certified and carved nothing out. Cooperative, municipal and federally owned poles are contract only.
Where a dispute goes
The FCC on an investor owned electric pole, and the FCC or, alternatively, the North Dakota Public Service Commission on an investor owned telephone pole. Cooperative and municipal electric poles have no forum on either layer and the attachment agreement is the whole of the governing law. A latent state power to set compensation for joint pole use exists but is closed to a telecommunications attacher by a second statute in a different chapter.
Confidence
High confidence on the certification, the absence of any state rate standard, the owner class exemptions and the forum, each read in full by the run; Provisional on the owner inventory and counts, the constitutional readings, the state court decisions and the BEAD figures.

AuthoritiesNDCC 49-02-05NDCC 49-21-01.2NDCC 49-21-09NDCC 49-03-01.5(6)NDCC 49-02-01.1Attorney General Letter Opinion 2000-L-81FCC DA 22-630

Read the chip above as one fact and no more: whether North Dakota has certified under Section 224(c) that it regulates pole attachments itself. It does not settle your pole. Cooperative and municipal poles sit outside federal jurisdiction whether or not a state has certified, so the two owner class lines are the ones that answer the question for the invoice in front of you.

This record is worked from the statute and the order that made it rather than from a summary of one. The confidence line is tied to its source: where a conclusion rests on weaker ground the record says so, because a hedge you can see is what makes the confident answers worth believing. The method is set out in how PoleProof researches and verifies, and how a cleared rule enters an audit is on the methodology page.

Back to the state research ledger · 45 jurisdictions on file

Scope

How to use this, and how to check it

Every conclusion above names the authority it rests on, so you can go read that authority and decide whether you agree. That is the point of publishing the record rather than asserting the result.

This is general information about the rules and it is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for your own counsel on a specific dispute. PoleProof is not a law firm. PoleProof performs financial and cost review of what you have been billed rather than engineering evaluation of what the pole owner determined was necessary. Rules change, and this record carries the date it was worked so you can see how current it is.

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