The American Cable Association’s assertion that blanket relief from certain...
The American Cable Association’s assertion that blanket relief from certain buyout restrictions is necessary to allow cable companies to compete with much larger incumbent wireline carriers “represents a gross mischaracterization of the current domestic telecommunications environment,” the Independent Telephone and…
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Telecommunications Alliance told the FCC in a letter Monday (http://xrl.us/bm5vq8). ACA made the statement in a joint letter with NCTA and CompTel supporting NCTA’s petition for relief from buyout restrictions between cable operators and certain CLECs, contained in Section 652 of the Communications Act. ITTA argued that ILECs are “hardly the ‘dominant’ providers of local exchange service,” as they face ever-rising non-ILEC VoIP subscriptions that had accounted for 28 percent of local wireline residential connections as of Dec. 2010, and a trend of consumers who “cut the cord” and subscribe exclusively to mobile telephone services. “It takes enormous audacity for ACA, et al. to argue that cable companies should be given a regulatory hand-out that would permit them to enter into cable-CLEC transactions without having to satisfy the statute’s public interest requirements as a means to ‘rekindle’ competition for local exchange service,” ITTA wrote. “The commission should refrain from taking action that would essentially provide wholesale approval of transactions that would eliminate a competitor from the market and create further disparities in regulatory treatment among service providers."