Judge to AT&T -- Free access for all!
In a ruling released Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Owen Panner rejected the telecommunications giant's contention that federal law prohibited city and county officials from forcing it to open its cable-based "broadband" networks to other Internet service providers.
Such networks, which are just now becoming available, promise to zip huge data files around the Net at speeds dozens of times faster than, say, a 28.8 bps modem does now, creating a whole new environment for audio, video, graphics and applications.
Roots of case
The City of Portland and County of Multnomah last year tried to require AT&T to offer customers a choice of Internet service providers. The city and county wanted to make open access a condition of their acceptance of AT&T's $48 billion takeover of cable operator Tele-Communications Inc.
AT&T, intending to require all customers to buy cable-based Internet service from its @Home Corp. subsidiary, filed suit against city and county officials in January. The company argued in its lawsuit that the local officials did not have the authority to force open access in exchange for approval of the merger, which transferred TCI's cable franchise in the area to AT&T.
The company also argued that it would be unable to recoup its investment in upgrading the cable network to offer high-speed Internet access if it lost exclusive control over Internet services.
AT&T officials could not be reached for comment late Friday. The company could appeal the judge's decision.
Officials hope for ripple effect
Portland officials and members of the OpenNet Coalition, a group of pro-open-access ISPs including America Online Inc., said during a press conference they were thrilled with the decision, which they predicted could spur similar efforts by local governments across the nation.
"We don't want to be barred from using a pipe simply because someone else owns it," Prodigy spokesman Marc Jacobson said during the press conference. "We are willing to pay fair compensation for the use of those pipes, but AT&T didn't want to let us do this."
Meanwhile, George Vradenburg, a senior vice president at AOL, called the decision an andorsement for "the right of cities to protect consumer choice and competition in cable-delivered Internet services."
"The decision today is a hands-down victory," said Portland City Council member Erik Sten. "The judge affirmed that we were absolutely right to do what we did."
The judge "agreed with the city of Portland on virtually every material issue" raised in the case, Sten added.
Other cities?
Other cities studying whether to try to force cable companies and telecommunications giants to open up their networks include San Francisco, Denver and Dallas, Jacobson said.
The federal government has so far resisted getting in the middle of the cable-access issue. Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission declined to rule on whether cable companies hold a monopoly on the high-speed Internet access, saying such a ruling would be premature.
Reuters contributed to this story.