Broadband Proponents Oppose Federal Rights-of-Way Rules
Three public interest groups that are strong proponents of building out broadband in the U.S. came to the defense of local governments in a filing at the FCC responding to the commission’s April acceleration of a broadband deployment notice of inquiry (http://xrl.us/bmeu7w). The New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative, the Media Access Project and Public Knowledge said the FCC should not impose “sweeping, standardized federal regulations on states and municipalities” in the interest of providing broadband providers easier access to public rights of way. Access Humboldt also signed the filing.
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"Right-of-way practices are designed to address a myriad of local interests -- including but not limited to ensuring sustainable use of property in the public trust and protecting public safety and general welfare,” the filing said (http://xrl.us/bmezfs). “The most appropriate practices for addressing those interests will vary by locality; thus a ‘one-size-fits-all’ regulatory framework administered by the Commission would be wholly inadequate and ill-equipped to adapt as local interests and needs evolve."
Rights-of-way (ROW) issues are no more of a deterrent to broadband deployment “than the kinds of obstacles that every real estate developer must navigate,” the groups argued. “Whatever tangential benefit their removal could achieve would be dwarfed by the costs to localities of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ framework that will not only fail to serve local interests but will also be a significant waste of resources spent duplicating existing institutional knowledge and experience at the local level with unnecessary federal oversight.”
"The large national providers want a one-size-fits-all model that overlooks the value of allowing experimentation and local variation in broadband deployment,” MAP Senior Vice President Andrew Schwartzman said Friday, commenting on the filing. “Montana’s needs are very different than Rhode Island’s. Federal preemption of what is an intrinsically local function will likely impede, rather than enhance broadband deployment."
"At the Open Technology Initiative we work to ensure that federal policy accurately reflects what happens on the ground in local communities,” said Sarah Morris, who authored the comments. “In this case the management of local rights of way is by its nature a local issue."
In a second filing of note, Level 3 said many of the local governments filing in the docket argue that only local governments have the “local expertise” to make the right calls on ROW issues. “Their line of argument ignores that fact that the ROW practices in some jurisdictions stray across the line of ‘reasonableness’ (sometimes far across) and produce outsized harm -- most notably to consumers and to the goal of widespread broadband deployment and subscription,” Level 3 said (http://xrl.us/bmezhq).