The Battle Over AT&T's Fiber Rollout

Tyler Too writes "AT&T is facing heated opposition from some communities where it wants to deploy its U-Verse fiber network. Ars Technica has a feature looking at the situation in the suburbs of Chicago. 'Legal uncertainty is the rule when it comes to IPTV deployments by telecommunications companies. Neither Congress nor the FCC [has] weighed in on whether services like U-verse require their operators to take out a cable franchise from cities, and no federal judge has issued a definitive ruling.' It's not just Chicago, either: 'With AT&T set to upgrade its infrastructure to support U-verse across its wide service area, this is a battle that could play out in thousands of communities across the country over the next few years.'"

Comments

Re:FCC supporting monopolies again

[moriya]

It's not as simple as that, though. The article details a possible legal loophole problem when it comes to IPTV. Since cable TV uses an actual cable line, then it's easy to enforce the law where necessary. AT&T's U-Verse, using IPTV, works differently in that it's "cable but not cable".

The Ars article has all the details, including the metal giant that they called 52B. It stands around 5ft tall, 4ft deep, and is about 2ft wide. It is big. AT&T wants to build and deploy those boxes wherever they please. Part of the problem is that these so-called tele-comm upgrade is also going to provide video services (like cable). Using IPTV as part of the legal loophole, AT&T wants to put a bunch of these boxes scattered across the towns that they're trying to roll fiber out to. These deployment also affect a section of a town. So unlike a cable TV deployment, service is available to the area where it is immediately available instead to every home in the town.

Both the suburban communities and AT&T are stuck. Yes, competition is good. We all want a choice. But in legal terms, both sides are stuck and AT&T isn't all that lenient when it comes to what they provide as services.

* AT&T claims it is not cable and that it's all telecomms.
* If AT&T deploys, the town is likely to be sued by Comcast and the state DA, citing violation of two laws.
* If AT&T cannot deploy, the town is sued citing support for monopolies and anti-competitive acts.

AT&T doesn't want a build-out, which would guarantee the service is provided to every house/building in that town within a limited time period. AT&T also refuses to provide a structured layout plan of where they wish to deploy these 52B boxes (for all we know, it might end up in someone's front yard 5ft from the house). The people in some of these towns do not want that. They also do not want a single corporate entity to be the only choice they have for broadband and cable tv services. So the question continues to remain: Where do you stand?