AT&T Corp. v. City of Portland

THOMAS, Circuit Judge:

This appeal presents the question of whether a local cable franchising authority may condition a transfer of a cable franchise upon the cable operator’s grant of unrestricted access to its cable broadband transmission facilities for Internet service providers other than the operator’s proprietary service. We conclude that the Communications Act prohibits a franchising authority from doing so and reverse the judgment of the district court.

I

Distilled to its essence, this is a struggle for control over access to cable broadband technology. In broadband data transmission, a…