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The Supreme Court “held that the FCC has general jurisdiction to implement the 1996 Act’s local-competition provisions ” , in the case AT&T v Lowa Utilities Board.
Another case AT&T/TCI v City of Portland is about the access rights (interconnection) to cable infrastructure by competing ISPs. AT&T after the merger with Telecommunications Inc. (TCI)—one of the US’s largest cable television operators, continues to offer cable broadband access as part of its @Home service (owned by AT&T). The city of Portland required AT&T to open up its cable modem platform to competing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and gain access to @Home’s subscriber base. However the AT&T refused the “open access” condition which was rejected by the US District Court. AT&T appealed to the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal.
The most interesting point which the Circuit Court’s decision was based on is that an ISP--@Home could be regulated as a common carrier and subject to requirements to interconnect as set out in the 1996 Act or not. As the Judge Thomas said: “…under [the 1996 Act], each telecommunications carrier has the duty …to interconnect directly or indirectly with the facilities and equipment of other telecommunications carriers” . Thereof if @Home is regulated as a common carrier, it has to open its cable modem platform with the force of the interconnection provisions of 1996 Act. The question now is the FCC regulates the Digital Subscriber Loop (DSL) service as an advanced telecommunications service subject to common carrier obligations. In the end, AT&T won. Through the decision of the Circuit Court, the power of the FCC which decides on telecommunications policy was confirmed.
B. RBOCs
The US District Court order split AT&T into two parts; one encompassed long-distance phone services and included the manufacturing of telecommunications equipment; the other part—RBOCs (the Regional Bell Operating Companies) encompasses regional and local phone services, which mergers into four units from seven at first.
Since the RBOCs have monopoly powers in local phone service areas, it is difficult to enter into this local service industry. For instance, AT&T and MCI lost up to one billion (USD) each for this attempts during 1997-1998.
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