RCA Points to NCTA Decision to Make Case for Handset Exclusivity Petition
The Rural Cellular Association, which has mounted a campaign seeking an FCC rulemaking limiting or barring handset exclusivity agreements between wireless carriers and equipment makers, sent a letter to the FCC Wednesday linking its requests to the recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decision upholding an FCC order forbidding exclusive agreements between apartment complexes and cable companies. RCA noted that AT&T and others opposing its petition lined up on the opposite side on the cable order.
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FCC officials said Wednesday that the RCA petition does not appear to be on the commission’s radar screen for quick action, but that could change after Julius Genachowski is confirmed as chairman. Members of the House are giving strong consideration to handset exclusivity legislation (CD May 22 p3). “It’s really not clear where the item is within the FCC’s list of priorities,” a supporter of the RCA petition told us Wednesday. “The commission has remained pretty tight-lipped about it.”
“The D.C. Circuit’s decision lends support to the Commission for similar action that could be taken to ban exclusive distribution agreements for handsets between wireless service providers and equipment manufacturers,” RCA said. “The arguments made by the FCC and the Intervenors (AT&T et al.) closely parallel those RCA and others have made in comments filed in the handset proceeding.” RCA cited comments reported in Communications Daily (CD May 27 p2) on the NCTA v. FCC case: “In that regard, AT&T provided comment to the trade press indicating agreement with the D.C. Circuit’s decision, noting that the ruling upholds FCC ‘authority and prohibits unfair practices by cable companies that limit competition and consumer choice for video service.'”
RCA asked for quick action on its petition for rulemaking. “It has been more than one year since RCA filed its petition,” the group said. “Over that year, consumers have been denied access to many new and innovative devices because they are not -- or, in many cases, cannot be -- customers of the large carrier possessing the exclusivity agreement for a given device. … The time is ripe for action.”
A carrier source opposed to the rulemaking sought by RCA said the comparison RCA makes is flawed since the NCTA v. FCC case focused on a scenario in which other companies were denied access to customers. The source said RCA had cited a multiple-dwelling unit order that was the subject of the court case while the case was still before the court and RCA’s comments were already disputed by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel. “Different market circumstances, different effect on consumers, different statutory arguments,” said a carrier source. “Seems like a huge stretch.”
“Contrary to RCA’s claims, its proposed rule is not supported by the Commission’s decisions that held that exclusive access arrangements in multi-dwelling units and multi-tenant environments were unreasonable practices,” AT&T said in Feb. 2 comments filed at the commission. “Those arrangements were held to be unreasonable practices because they gave a single service provider exclusive access to all of the tenants in these buildings and thus entirely foreclosed competition for multi-tenant residents and businesses.”