The U.S. Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Aereo backs...

The U.S. Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Aereo backs up Comptel’s argument that interconnection rights and obligations are “technology neutral” and don’t change with the transition to IP technology, said CompTel CEO Chip Pickering in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1lPkoA7). The high court rejected Aereo’s argument (CD June 26 p1) (see separate report above in this issue) that its technology distinguishes it from a cable operator and takes it out of the reach of the Copyright Act, said Pickering. Aereo’s arguments are similar to those used by incumbent phone companies, Pickering said. “A change in the transmission technology used to deliver a telephone call from one party to another does not alter the statutory obligations of the network providers to interconnect in order to enable the delivery of the call.” Since the end result of an IP transmission is the same to the customer as a TDM transmission, the regulations shouldn’t see a difference between them, Pickering said. “Interconnection is the lynchpin that allows customers of one provider to communicate with those of a different provider and remains as necessary today as it was 18 years ago.” The FCC should clarify that “large incumbent phone companies must interconnect on an IP-to-IP basis for managed VoIP traffic,” Pickering said Monday.