Federal appeals court overturns FCC local competition rules

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today remanded the FCC’s local competition and line-sharing orders.

Concerning the local competition order, the court took issue with the FCC’s decision to make its unbundling requirements “uniformly applicable” to all elements in every geographic or customer market. The court determined that this approach unjustifiably required incumbent carriers to make UNEs available even where there “is no reasonable basis” for thinking that competition would suffer if those elements weren’t available.

Regarding the FCC’s expressed belief that “more unbundling is better,” the court said Congress did “not authorize so open-ended a judgment” when it drafted the Telecom Act.

The court, in remanding the line sharing order – which required the unbundling of the high frequency spectrum of the copper loop in order to make it possible for CLECs to provide DSL service – criticized the commission for failing to consider the relevance of competition coming from cable and, to a lesser extent, satellite.

--Glenn Bischoff, Senior Writer