FCC's Wireline Streamlining Could See Legal Challenges Over Authority: Lawyer

The FCC's proceeding on streamlining wireline deployment permitting shows the fundamental policy schism between the desire to speed up broadband buildouts nationwide and the desire to preserve local governance over rights-of-way and community planning, Ice Miller's Meagan Sunn wrote last week. While the Communications Act gives the FCC authority to preempt state or local rules that prohibit provision of telecommunications services, the agency's attempt to define certain permitting parties as inherently prohibitive could lead to legal challenges over the scope of that authority and its interaction with long-standing local land-use and rights-of-way management powers, said Sunn, the law firm's senior director of government affairs.