Re: Conduit Lease/IRU Pricing

[James Jun <james.jun () towardex com>]

On Mon, Feb 06, 2023 at 06:57:27AM -0500, Fletcher Kittredge wrote:
> A big issue you don't mention is the easement, the legal right to place
> conduit. What does it mean to buy conduit if you don't have an easement on
> the property to use the conduit?

Typically, in large telecom installs like this (esp. for joint trench builds), the lead company obtains an Easement 
Agreement which allows "other telecommunications providers", "licensees" or "other designated agents" of the lead 
company to access and use the full enjoyment of the easement areas.  If you dig up registry of deeds for some large 
telecom joint trench builds (I can think of at least two examples), you'll find that these come pretty standard.

Further, conduit lease and license agreements of these sort for the buyer typically include Underlying Rights clause 
that also requires the trench system owner (the seller) to maintain underlying rights for the purchaser of rights to 
the conduit.  Seller is required to ensure that the buyer has proper legal rights to enter and make full enjoyment of 
the conduit capacity it purchased or otherwise licensed from the seller.

For constructions occuring outside of private property, the lead company is responsible for engaging local authorities 
owning the public right-of-way to propose the system installation in a multi-tenancy nature (i.e. the system meets and 
exceeds Dig Once and joint trench requirements set out by the municipality and so forth); as such, the right-of-way 
siting permits are developed to allow construction of the entire system and with the understanding of access by all 
users, in principle and procedures as provided under respective state laws.


James