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edit: March 5th, @07:02PM
| The FCC news release on these new rules
»hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/a···11A1.pdf
The Order addresses several ways by which local franchising authorities are unreasonably refusing to award competitive franchises. These include drawn-out local negotiations with no time limits; unreasonable build-out requirements; unreasonable requests for in-kind payments that attempt to subvert the five percent cap on franchise fees; and unreasonable demands with respect to public, educational and government access (or PEG).
To eliminate the unreasonable barriers to entry into the cable market, and to encourage investment in broadband facilities, the Commission: Found that franchising negotiations that extend beyond certain time frames amount to an unreasonable refusal to award a competitive franchise within the meaning of Section 621(a)(1); Found that requiring an applicant to agree to unreasonable build-out requirements constitutes an unreasonable refusal to award a competitive franchise; Found that, unless certain specified costs, fees, and other compensation required by local franchising authorities are counted toward the statutory five percent cap on franchise fees, demanding them could result in an unreasonable refusal to award a competitive franchise; Found that it would be an unreasonable refusal to award a competitive franchise if the local franchising authority denied an application based on a new entrants refusal to undertake certain unreasonable obligations relating to public, educational, and governmental (PEG) and institutional networks (I-Nets); and Preempted local laws, regulations, and requirements, including local level-playing-field provisions, to the extent they impose greater restrictions on market entry than the rules adopted herein. The Commission concluded that although the record allows it to determine generally what constitutes an unreasonable refusal to award an additional competitive franchise at the local level, the Commission does not have sufficient information to make such determinations with respect to franchising decisions made at the state level or in compliance with state statutory directives, such as statewide franchising decisions. As a result, the Order addresses only decisions made by county- or municipal-level franchising authorities.
Comments by the 2 FCC commissioners that oppose the new rules: »hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/a···80A3.pdf »hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/a···80A4.pdf
The actual rule changes are relatively few and can be found in Appendix B of this document: »hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/a···80A1.pdf and that is pages 79 and 80 of the document. -- -- My BLOG My Web Page | |   marigolds Gainfully employed, finally Premium,MVM join:2002-05-13 Saint Louis, MO
| There are additional findings on existing rules summarized in paragraphs 5 and 65(item 4 will especially cause some problems) and detailed in paragraphs (67, 70, 72, and 73), (82, 89, 90, and 91), (103 and 104), (105, 108, and 109), (110, 114, 115, 119, and 120) and (121 and 122).
Footnote 149 is pretty interesting. Basically, Verizon got caught heavily stretching the truth about unrelated LFA demands. It is especially interesting in light of footnote 352 where AT&T and Verizon refused (after the Tampa Bay incident) to provide details of which LFAs had made unrelated demands.
Paragraphs 105 and 108 are particularly important, since they specify that requests in the community needs assessments count towards the 5% franchise fee cap with no requirement that the requests be fulfilled. This should eventually be challenged in court, but technically this means that a franchise applicant can apply an entire community needs assessment to franchise fees without spending a cent.
119 is a big kicker, because it provides a judicial method of blocking PEG and I-Net support completely even if agreed to in a franchise. Any support for an LEC is essentially voluntary now and cannot be required (see footnote 396).
Paragraph 121 authorizes construction of video facilities if combined with non-video facilities without a franchise as long as video services are not deployed. This will be important in a few ongoing legal disputes. -- ISCABBS - the oldest and largest BBS on the Internet telnet://bbs.iscabbs.com Professional Geographer Geographic Information Science researcher | |
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