Articles

DEK: San Francisco is considering legislative changes to increase apartment dwellers’ choices of internet providers. Unfortunately, this type of ordinance is likely to give renters fewer choices rather than more.

No developer wants to think a relationship with a service provider will go wrong. But planning ahead of time to be able to efficiently terminate a contract and substitute an alternative provider is always a good idea.

By Carl E. Kandutsch and Stephen Mayo

Published in January-February issue of Broadband Communities magazine 
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originally appeared in Broadband Communities magazine.

Avalon, the first fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) neighborhood, or fiberhood, in Georgia was recently announced in Alpharetta, a northern Atlanta suburb. Atlanta is the commercial hub of the Southern United States and America’s second most wired city. Alpharetta is known as the “Technology City of the South”. There is hardly a more appropriate location for Georgia’s first fiberhood than Alpharetta.

Avalon, a $600 million mixed-use development, currently under construction, located on 86 acres, will be home to a mixture of shoppers, homeowners, renters, office workers, retailers, restaurants and hotel guests. Avalon’s owners, North American Properties (NAP), have placed connectivity as a top priority for all of its developments with Avalon leading the way.

Aereo emerges as the victor in a second court challenge aimed at shutting the Web-TV company down.

May/June 2013 issue of Broadband Communities Magazine

By Carl Kandutsch, Attorney

One of the big stories in cable television these days is the ongoing (so far) success of Web-television company Aereo, founded by CEO Chet Kanojia in 2012 and funded in part by Barry Diller. For $12 per month, Aereo users can stream high-definition feeds of more than 20 local broadcast networks, including CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, and PBS, through an Internet connection. Aereo uses a phalanx of postage-stamp-sized antennas that are leased to Aereo subscribers and pull broadcast signals off the air, just as old-fashioned “rabbit ears” or rooftop antennas attached to individual television sets did. The signals are then sent over the Internet to DVR devices at customers’ premises or to customers’ mobile devices. Currently available in New York City, Aereo plans to expand into at least 22 additional U.S. markets.

Published in the January/February 2013 issue of Broadband Communities magazine (www.bbpmag.com).

Public rights-of-way are too valuable to be assigned haphazardly. Municipal officials should use all the tools at their disposal to manage these assets carefully, ensuring that their cities will have the broadband capacity they need for years to come.

By Carl E. Kandutsch, Stephen Mayo, Kate McMahon and Tom Garrison

Editor’s Note: Four leading experts on broadband planning and development spoke at Broadband Communities Summit 2012 about modern right-of-way management, or how municipalities can derive maximum public benefit from the use of their assets for telecommunications networks. Afterwards, the four collaborated on this article, which expands on their presentations.

Competition at multifamily properties can benefit all parties – as long as property owners are committed to make sure it works. May/June 2012

Competition among broadband service providers in multiple-dwelling unit (MDU) properties has become the norm since the 2007 FCC decision to prohibit enforcement of exclusive service agreements for video providers.

MDU residents have always desired choice among broadband service providers, but only since telephone companies entered the multichannel video distribution markets has competition flourished. Because competition spawns innovation and keeps a lid on prices while creating wealth, it is generally good for the public.

By installing neutral lockboxes for terminating home-run wiring, property owners can sidestep disputes among providers that threaten their ability to provide competitive services. November/December 2011

Every MDU owner who desires to give tenants a choice among video providers at a property with a single set of home-run wires faces a lockbox problem. A lockbox is a secured location at which a cable operator’s distribution system is joined to the wiring inside a multitenant building. Service providers naturally want to control home-run wiring, and a lockbox provides a means to block other providers’ access to that wiring.

MDU owners who want to open their properties to multiple cable providers may be able to use the FCC's cable home wiring rules for this purpose.  March/April 2011

Are the FCC's inside wiring rules, including the rules for home-run wiring and cable home wiring, still relevant in a competitive marketplace characterized by nonexclusive access to multidwelling unit (MDU) properties?

In an article in the January/February issue of Broadband Properties, I identified three reasons property owners might be reluctant to use the Commission's procedures for gaining control over home-run wiring: First, implementation of those procedures is complex, time-consuming and easily blocked or delayed by incumbent cable operators; second, whether and how the rules apply when the same wiring is used by the incumbent cable operator to deliver services other than video services is unclear; and third, the rules may be preempted by contractual language in the incumbent's right-of-entry agreement. 

The extent to which the FCC rules are useful in today's competitive MDU environment  January 2011

A lot has happened since the FCC's inside wiring rules were first promulgated in 1996. Notably, the market for MDU property access has become much more competitive, which was the Commission's goal from the beginning. Today, it is not at all uncommon for two or more broadband providers, each offering multiple communications services, to co-exist at an apartment or condominium community competing for subscribers. The extent to which the FCC wiring rules have contributed to the growth of competition is debatable, but also beside the point: government regulations exist to correct market failures, and when the market is competitive, the effectiveness of legacy regulations need not be debated. The question raised in this two-part article concerns the extent to which the FCC rules are useful in today's competitive MDU environment, and to suggest some strategies by which property managers may leverage existing rules to enhance competition at, and therefore the value of their MDU assets.