Earlier today, on Wednesday, July 10, 2019, the United States Federal Communications Commmission, a federal agency in charge of handling all communications made within the United States, ruled to remove several clauses from a municipal-level ordinance put into place by the city of San Francisco, California, that is widely thought to reduce some competitive advantages of companies that are participating in the local broadband Internet marketplace, ultimately helping consumers.
The San Francisco city legislation is known as Article 52. Among other things – though this is the most important takeaway of which – Article 52 gives broadband Internet service providers operating within the city of San Francisco to ground their connections to their own company Internet service infrastructure using existing wiring that is already in place within residential housing buildings that are home to more than one household unit.
Some feel that the local San Francisco legislation is unfair to telecommunications providers that have already established existing links from its customers’ places of residence to their own Internet service provision networks. Putting these infrastructures into place, on national or regional and local levels alike, requires significant financial investment on behalf of telecommunications companies. Since other service providers, especially those that are less established than industry leaders, are able to latch onto existing infrastructures that don’t belong to them, they will be better able to compete with their larger counterparts.
The United States Federal Communications Commission repealed part of the city of San Francisco’s Article 52 legislation because its decision-makers, led by FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, felt that telecom industry competitors that had already laid out the groundwork for Internet service provision were unfairly harmed by the legislation.
Right now, across the municipality of San Francisco, California, tons of owners of multi-unit residential units, complexes, or campuses are able to command compensation from Internet service providers in order to allow them – and only them – access to those properties’ telecommunications infrastructures. However, these property owners could soon find themselves unable to legally block other Internet service providers out of contention in terms of providing their services to the residents of their respective properties.
The two Democrats on the five-member Federal Communications Commission board of decision-makers voted against Commissioner Pai’s proposal to reduce the extent of the local provision formally known as Article 52, whereas the three Republican members of the board voted in favor of Pai’s proposed plan to repeal parts of Article 52.
Dil Bole Oberoi
