Ajit Pai tries to kill San Francisco’s attempt to spur broadband competition
The article distorts what the dispute is actually about:<p>&gt; The ordinance only applies when the inside wiring belongs to the property owner. Under the rule, property owners who have outfitted their buildings with Internet wiring cannot deny access to ISPs, making it harder for them to strike exclusive deals with Internet providers.<p>If you read the NPRM (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.fcc.gov&#x2F;public&#x2F;attachments&#x2F;DOC-358068A1.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.fcc.gov&#x2F;public&#x2F;attachments&#x2F;DOC-358068A1.pdf</a>, starting at paragraph 11), you’ll see that you’re not necessarily talking about scenarios, as the article implies, where the building owns the wires because it paid to install the wires. In many scenarios, the building owner technically owns the wiring, but the service provider made the original investment in wiring the building and entered into a contractual arrangement to recoup the initial investment.<p>Consider the Interstate 66 express lanes into DC. In that project, private investors paid to build the new freeways, but the State owns the road. What the investors got in return is the exclusive right to operate the toll system for 50 years, plus a cut of the toll revenue. If you eliminate the exclusivity provision as anti-competitive, you’ve totally overturned the original bargain.<p>Maybe that sort of deal was a bad idea to begin with and shouldn’t have been allowed. But overturning those contractual arrangements after the fact creates real problems. (And note that no government entity pays or subsidizes companies to wire up apartment buildings in San Francisco, so that angle isn’t relevant here.)<p>The solution is probably, as a matter of building codes, to require MDUs to be wired with Ethernet.