FCC head eyes cable competition
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is looking at pushing for competition for cable operators from phone companies, according to a published report.
USA Today said that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told the newspaper in a written statement that he is looking at enforcing a little-noticed provision of the 1992 Cable Act that says local governments "may not unreasonably refuse to award an additional competitive franchise" for video.
Martin told the newspaper that granting additional franchises for cable television service to companies such as Verizon Communications and SBC Communications "would promote competition and stimulate broadband deployment.
"Several weeks ago I asked the staff to explore what the commission can do to ensure that local authorities are not unreasonably refusing to award additional competitive licenses (for video)," Martin's statement to the newspaper said.
posted by Fergie @ 8/23/2005 07:12:00 AM
1 Comments:
This is so out in left field. Either the reporter got the story wrong, or there is some serious disinformation happening here.
Municipalities currently are prevented from awarding franchise monopolies to a single provider. In fact, I think most would welcome competitive providers to their community.
The problem here isn't municipalities putting up barriers to the poor, misunderstood telcos--it's that the telcos don't want the burden of local franchise agreements.
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