FCC Kills Build-out Requirements for Telecoms

Frankencelery writes "In a 3-2 vote, the FCC has altered cable franchising laws in the U.S. to the advantage of AT&T and Verizon. 'The FCC order imposes a 90-day limit on local communities' franchising decisions, but, more importantly, does away with build-out requirements. Those requirements generally insist that companies offer service to all the residents in the town, rather than cherry-picking the profitable areas.' Good news for the telecoms, but bad for cities who want a say in the fiber deployments."

Comments

Re:This is not for AT&T

[Anonymous Coward]

> > In which case they make larger profits.
>
> Which is bad how, exactly?

At the expense of equal access, public infrastructure, and realistic phone rates to go along with those benefits.

Or, was there an upside to corruption that we weren't aware of? Enlighten us how buying off greedy politicians is so great.

OK, forget about the slums.

[brennanw]

Think instead of remote rural communities where the cost of setting up the infrastructure is too high for big companies to want to bother when they can spend all their time making money off of cities.

Rural communities already went through this with cable tv -- cable companies wouldn't put down the cable because it was too far away, and then when some communities tried to go with satellite TV instead the cable companies got a COURT ORDER forbidding them to do so because the cable companies had exclusive agreements with the states.

Profit is made off of these services because the companies that sell them want the services to be *indespensible*. Trying to market a service as indespensible while refusing to provide it to certain segments of society does not make for a healthy society.

So in answer to the question:

And just why should we want companies to have to market in areas where there are small / no profits to be made?

When a company decides to claim a monopoly on a service (and when you purchase a franchise from a community or state government you generally wind up having a monopoly in that area) then they have a responsibility to make that service available to all citizens. A monopoly is a different beast from standard business practices, because there are no other choices to make.