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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."
Somebody just got a brand new phantom in their driveway via payouts from Telecoms. The FCC are the ones that required cable companies and sat companies to sign individual franchise agreements with each city that service was offered. Why would they go and allow telecoms to skip that step with their services? At the minimum mandate that they have to roll out their products to everyone. Crazy!
I'm not from around your neck of the woods, and honestly couldn't tell you if the decision was a good or a bad one. Nor do I understand the consequences or background to the situation, even after RTFAs.
The very fact that the decision had to be made leads me to believe there are communities, cities, populaces with many thousands if not millions of people who want a say in how their town is serviced by a telecommunications company. Some kind of kickback, like a swimming pool, or some franchise fees.
To my naive way of thinking, it seems incredible that 5 (3-2) people can veto the decision making process / power of entire cities or possibly even states, throughout the entire country.
It also seems kind of wrong. Power, corruption, ultimate power, you know, that kind of wrong.
In my area, there's an ISP that's also a CLEC (Competing Local Exchange Carrier - they offer dialtone). They're building out fiber to buildings for Ethernet and telephony services, and would like to get into video (TV) but since they're a small company, they just can't do it if they're going to be required to build-out to the non-profitable areas. It's not just a matter of raising prices for everyone to subsidize the sparsely-populated areas, it's a matter of not having the access to the capital required to do such a build-out in the first place. That, and the "densely populated" areas around here are not big enough to make the subsidization idea feasable even if the build-out could be done.
Here's another perspective - the telco's are only offering DSL in specific areas - sure it's probably primarily for technical reasons - certain radius from the CO for DSL to work, but if they can "cherry pick" for DSL, why not the rest of the services they offer.
On the other hand, arguments about large numbers of rural residents not having phone or electric sevice now if the build-out requirements were never in place are hard to ignore, and high-speed internet is being considered a basic necessity by more and more people as time goes on. Perhaps the FCC doesn't agree about that, or perhaps they figure having wide-spread fiber deployments at all would be a better starting point to eventually get fiber to rural areas than if fiber wasn't in the city/town at all.
I'm asking this honestly, because I want to know: do you have citations for that info about cable companies getting court orders preventing rural consumers from obtaining satellite? I haven't heard about it before, but I don't follow that particular market too closely, either. If what you say is true, I would like to read about the circumstances.
Anecdotally, I can tell you about my situation. I live in a rural area myself, where cable stops about a half a mile from my house. It sucks, but I don't feel that I'm *entitled* to cable internet. Sure, there is only one cable provider in the area, but when we got wireless a few months ago (the antenna is on top of the local grain silos, how's that for rural?) the cable company didn't complain. There is no bad blood on either part. It simply wouldn't be profitable to run cable half a mile for one customer, and we understand that. So, we go to a competitor, and they understand that. I don't see why the law should force them to run their cable out to us if it won't be profitable. It is not paid for by my taxes.
I know it sounds like I'm sacrificing my soul at the altar of profit or whatever, but think about this: if the state forced the cable company to build out to my house, or beyond, the start-up that provides wireless would probably not have come to our area (we were in close contact with the company, trying to get them to come out here). If the state forced build-out, it would have (1) lowered the profits of the cable company, (2) lowered the profits of the wireless company, and (3) probably prevented the wireless company from even coming here and providing internet to others who are quite a bit farther from the cable line than we are. As it is, we and our neighbors get our internet, the cable company doesn't have to worry about unprofitable build-out, and the wireless company is making some good money in a new area. Like I said, this is purely anecdotal, but the theory applies elsewhere: don't force companies to provide a service, let the demand from the consumers make it desirable to provide the service.
This is why I am so interested in reading more about cable companies claiming monopolies. Build-out laws would have hurt my area, but if they really are stopping competitors while still not providing the service themselves, then yes I agree with you, they should be subject to such laws.