"Attachment" means any wire, cable, or antenna for the transmission of intelligence by telecommunications or television, including cable television, light waves, or other phenomena, or for the transmission of electricity for light, heat, or power, and any related device, apparatus, or auxiliary equipment, installed upon any pole or in any telecommunications, electrical, cable television, or communications right of way, duct, conduit, manhole or handhole, or other similar facilities owned or controlled, in whole or in part, by one or more owners, where the installation has been made with the consent of the one or more owners consistent with the rules in this chapter.

"Attachment agreement" means an agreement negotiated in good faith between an owner and a utility or licensee establishing the rates, terms, and conditions for attachments to the owner's facilities.

"Carrying charge" means the costs the owner incurs to own and maintain poles, ducts, or conduits without regard to attachments. Those costs are comprised of the owner's administrative, maintenance, and depreciation expenses, commission-authorized rate of return on investment, and applicable taxes. When used to calculate an attachment rate, the carrying charge may be expressed as a percentage of the net pole, duct, or conduit investment.

"Communications space" means the usable space on a pole below the communications workers safety zone and above the vertical space for meeting ground clearance requirements under the National Electrical Safety Code.

"Conduit" means a structure containing one or more ducts, usually placed in the ground, in which cables or wires may be installed.

"Duct" means a single enclosed raceway for conductors, cable, or wire.

"Facility" means a pole, duct, conduit, manhole or handhole, right of way, or similar structure on or in which attachments can be made. "Facilities" refers to more than one facility.

"Inner duct" means a duct-like raceway smaller than a duct that is inserted into a duct so that the duct may carry multiple wires or cables.

"Licensee" means any person, firm, corporation, partnership, company, association, joint stock association, or cooperatively organized association, other than a utility, that is authorized to construct attachments upon, along, under, or across the public ways.

"Make-ready work" means engineering or construction activities necessary to make a pole, duct, conduit, right of way, or other support equipment available for a new attachment, attachment modifications, or additional attachments. Such work may include rearrangement of existing attachments, installation of additional support for the utility pole, or creation of additional capacity, up to and including replacement of an existing pole with a taller pole.

"Net cost of a bare pole" means (a) the original investment in poles, including purchase price of poles and fixtures and excluding cross-arms and appurtenances, less depreciation reserve and deferred federal income taxes associated with the pole investment, divided by (b) the number of poles represented in the investment amount. When an owner owns poles jointly with another utility, the number of poles for purposes of calculating the net cost of a bare pole is the number of solely owned poles plus the product of the number of the jointly owned poles multiplied by the owner's ownership percentage in those poles. In the unusual situation in which net pole investment is zero or negative, the owner may use gross figures with appropriate net adjustments.

"Occupant" means any utility or licensee with an attachment to an owner's facility that the owner has granted the utility or licensee the right to maintain.

"Occupied space" means that portion of the facility used for attachment that is rendered unusable for any other attachment, which is presumed to be one foot on a pole and one half of a duct in a duct or conduit.

"Overlashing" means the tying of additional communications wires or cables to existing communications wires or cables attached to poles.

"Owner" means the utility that owns or controls the facilities to or in which an occupant maintains, or a requester seeks to make, attachments.

"Pole" means an above-ground structure on which an owner maintains attachments, which is presumed to be thirty-seven and one-half feet in height. When the owner is an electrical company as defined in RCW 80.04.010, "pole" is limited to structures used to attach electric distribution lines.

"Requester" means a licensee or utility that applies to an owner to make attachments to or in the owner's facilities and that has an agreement with the owner establishing the rates, terms, and conditions for attachments to the owner's facilities.

"Right of way" is an owner's legal right to construct, install, or maintain facilities or related equipment in or on grounds or property belonging to another person. For purposes of this chapter, "right of way" includes only such legal rights that permit the owner to allow third parties access to those rights.

"Unusable space," with respect to poles, means the space on the pole below the usable space, including the amount required to set the depth of the pole. In the absence of measurements to the contrary, a pole is presumed to have twenty-four feet of unusable space.

"Usable space," with respect to poles, means the vertical space on a pole above the minimum grade level that can be used for the attachment of wires, cables, and associated equipment, and that includes space occupied by the owner. In the absence of measurements to the contrary, a pole is presumed to have thirteen and one-half feet of usable space. With respect to conduit, "usable space" means capacity within a conduit that is available or that could, with reasonable effort and expense, be made available, for the purpose of installing wires, cable, and associated equipment for telecommunications or cable services, and that includes capacity occupied by the owner.

"Utility" means any electrical company or telecommunications company as defined in RCW 80.04.010, and does not include any entity cooperatively organized or owned by federal, state, or local government, or a subdivision of state or local government.