shouting loudly

FCC reduces local control over cable franchising

The FCC is intent on making it easier to get into the cable television business.

The Commission has ordered franchising authorities at the state and local level to lower the requirements placed on new franchisees. Additionally, the Commission served notice on a new rulemaking to decide how these new rules apply to current franchisees. As the official press release (pdf) states:

In the Order, the Commission concludes that the current operation of the franchising process constitutes an unreasonable barrier to entry that impedes the achievement of the interrelated federal goals of enhanced cable competition and accelerated broadband deployment.

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”).

The FCC’s objections include: “unreasonable build-out requirements” and “unreasonable obligations relating to public, educational, and governmental (’PEG’)” networks.

In other words, if you as a community think a cable company should, say, offer service to the entire community, or provide a certain level of support for public access television, Chairman Martin’s FCC has officially usurped the right to draw that line. Talk about a violation of states’ rights. And here I thought Republicans were 10th-Amendment fundamentalists. (Maybe it’s only Republican voters.)

UPDATE: After sharing this post, I realized that a couple other details should be included. First, the companies seeking to get into the cable business are primarily phone companies. They’d like to sell cable over their still-generally-forthcoming fiber optic lines; given the legal right to evade those messy public interest obligations, they’d really rather not roll out their expensive fiber optic lines in poor and/or sparsely populated areas. (The words “digital divide” should enter your mind here.)

Second, this has implications for network neutrality because the bill onto which neutrality mandates were to be grafted centers on the telcos’ desire to expedite franchising. If the FCC can do it on the administrative level, why bother with the much messier legislative process and all the compromises that might come along? Especially in light of the midterm elections’ outcomes, the telcos are concerned about getting such a bill through without accepting something resembling the Snowe/Dorgan bill as an amendment.