The U.S. Federal Communications Commission Thursday postponed for up to two weeks a key decision whether to regulate multiple service providers' access to multitenant buildings.
At the beginning of this morning's FCC monthly open public meeting, Chairman William Kennard announced that the item was being dropped from the previously announced agenda at the request of Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth.
Furchtgott-Roth, one of two Republicans on the five-member commission, is seeking to clarify how much authority the FCC has to regulate building owners.
For the past year, the FCC has been considering whether it should force building owners to give all requesting carriers access to common wiring closets, risers and rooftops on a "nondiscriminatory" basis. Fixed-wireless local-loop carriers have been leading the charge for such a ruling. Commercial real estate owners and the new real estate-owned "building local exchange carriers" (BLEC) have been fighting it.
Despite the postponement, Kennard made it clear in a brief remark that the fixed-wireless providers - and other competitive local exchange carriers with no real estate ownership - had made progress in getting their way at the FCC. For businesses and consumers who occupy multitenant buildings, "I think it's important to provide real choice in telecommunications providers," Kennard said.
A source close to recent negotiations at the FCC told Network World the commission is now pondering something of a legal compromise. Building owners have bitterly complained that any attempt by the FCC to force them to provide space to carriers would violate constitutional restrictions against seizure of private property. Under the plan being discussed, the FCC would avoid actually dictating rules to building owners. Instead it would direct all carriers under its jurisdiction - including the BLECs - to deal only with buildings that have adopted a sufficiently nondiscriminatory policy.
The source, who asked not to be identified, noted that this "indirect regulation" approach would be similar to the FCC's policy on foreign phone calls, which has been credited with forcing down international rates.
Two years ago the FCC survived a lawsuit from foreign carriers who complained that the FCC exceeded its domestic U.S. authority by establishing low benchmarks for the fees foreign carriers charge U.S. carriers for completing calls. The FCC successfully argued it was not trying to regulate foreign carriers but was only directing U.S. carriers to sign international contracts with acceptably low rates.