The rules that govern how video, voice and Internet services are delivered to people who live in what the Federal Communications Commission calls multiple tenant environments (MTEs) are complicated. It’s a universe that includes apartments and condominiums (multiple dwelling units/MDUs), and commercial real estate, such as shopping malls or office buildings. Later this month, the FCC will consider, and likely approve, the start of a broad enquiry that could result in an update and overhaul of those regulations.… More
In what must have been an epic, nay, herculean, speed reading session, FCC chair Ajit Pai came across those comments and felt compelled to issue a press release trumpeting the blindingly obvious conclusion that, hey, these guys agree with me so they must be pretty smart.… More
This week’s decision by the federal appeals court in Washington, DC to stand by an earlier ruling that okayed the Federal Communications Commission’s reclassification of broadband as a common carrier service contains an interesting warning to the Trump administration and current FCC chair Ajit Pai. Judge Janice Brown, who dissented and argued that the FCC order was illegal, lambasted off the record interference by the white house in regulatory processes…
If the means by which the President seeks to shape the agency’s deliberations transgress legal procedures designed to ensure public accountability — like notice-and-comment requirements and rules regarding ex parte communications — he undermines the accountability rationale for confining executive Power to the President…Acting with concern for public accountability seems especially salient when the President “and his White House staff” seek to exert influence over the direction of an ostensibly-independent agency…
This Order shows signs of a government having grown beyond the consent of the governed: the collapsing respect for Bicameralism and Presentment; the administrative state shoehorning major questions into long-extant statutory provisions without congressional authorization; a preference for rent-seeking over liberty.
The Federal Communications Commission started down the road to roll back its previous decision to regulate broadband as a common carrier service last week. A draft decision to open up a process to reverse its 2015 decision to reclassify Internet access (yes, it’s incredibly bureaucratic) from being an information service to a telecommunications service will be taken up by commissioners next month.
Information services are value added services. Facebook adds value to the your bits by processing that data and connecting it every which way with what your friends send them.… More
The weed whacker was whirling at full tilt yesterday as the Federal Communications Commission decided to take on local limits on cell sites and utility poles, and roll back regulation of wholesale broadband services. The voting was largely bipartisan. Democrat Mignon Clyburn concurred with republicans Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly on opening two major enquiries, one on whether wireless permit shot clocks should be given deemed granted teeth when they expire and the other on a range of wireline issues, including limits on how long local governments can take to review construction permits and how much they can charge.… More
Who came in third depends on how you’re figuring it. Comcast bid the third most money – $1.7 billion – but ended up with only 73 licenses, a mere 3%.… More
San Francisco’s open broadband access rule for apartments and condominiums will be tested at the Federal Communications Commission. As adopted by the San Francisco board of supervisors, the ordinance allows any resident of a multi-dwelling unit (MDU) to buy Internet service from any provider. The landlord or homeowner’s association has to allow access to both the building and the existing wiring inside of it. A lobbying front for companies that make a living providing exclusive broadband service to MDUs is asking the FCC to overturn the rule – Article 52, for short – because, they say, it will result in less competition and fewer choices…
Though styled as a vehicle for promoting consumer “choice” among communications services, Article 52 in fact offers a de facto sweetheart deal to large, well-financed entities by overriding voluntary, contractual arrangements that are preconditions to the financing required for buildout by small, entrepreneurial start-ups.
