Chattanooga’s Electric Power Board (EPB) utility and the...

Chattanooga’s Electric Power Board (EPB) utility and the city of Wilson, North Carolina, separately petitioned the FCC Thursday to use its authority under Communications Act Section 706 to pre-empt portions of state laws limiting the expansion of municipal broadband services. EPB’s petition seeks FCC pre-emption of a portion of Tennessee law that prohibits existing municipal broadband networks from serving adjacent areas not currently in its 600-square-mile electric service territory (http://bit.ly/1kZ4lM6). EPB has received “regular requests” in recent years to offer its gigabit broadband service in communities adjacent to its electric service territory that are in a “digital desert,” EPB said. The utility said in its petition that it would extend service only to cities and counties that request EPB’s presence. Any extensions of the broadband service would need to be financially feasible and EPB “never will” use revenue from its electric service to “cross-subsidize Internet and video services,” the utility said. EPB had been considering filing the petition last week, just before the House passed the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act (HR-5016), which included an amendment that would stop the FCC from pre-empting state municipal broadband laws (CD July 17 p3 ). There isn’t currently a Senate equivalent of the Blackburn amendment. Wilson’s petition seeks FCC pre-emption of a North Carolina law that imposes multiple legal and procedural requirements on cities seeking to provide communications services. Wilson offers its Greenlight gigabit broadband service only in Wilson County, North Carolina, but said it has received “numerous” requests to expand the service into the other five counties in which it currently provides electric service. State law “has the purpose and effect of prohibiting it from doing so,” Wilson said (http://bit.ly/1kZ54gc). The FCC is reviewing the petitions and looks forward to “a full opportunity for comment by all interested parties, and will carefully review the specific legal, factual, and policy issues before us,” Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a statement.