A district court erred when it ruled AT&T need not obtain a new ca...
A district court erred when it ruled AT&T need not obtain a new cable franchise before streaming its U-verse video service along its existing Kentucky phone lines, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday, remanding the case to…
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the lower court for further proceedings (http://xrl.us/bmwqfb). The district court had said AT&T’s perpetual statewide phone franchise, granted in 1886, “permits it to use its current facilities to transmit IP video services to customers in Hopkinsville.” In reversing, the 6th Circuit said the lower court had used the wrong standard of review, improperly assigning the burden of proof to the non-moving party, Mediacom. The district court also relied on “self-serving facts written by AT&T in a stipulated agreement” to make findings about the nature of the U-verse service, the new ruling said. “The district court stated that Mediacom’s claim turns on a single question -- whether the transmission of IP video signals is outside the scope of AT&T Kentucky’s existing franchise,” Judge Danny Boggs wrote. “This very well may be the proper question of law on a motion for summary judgment -- assuming there are no genuine issues of material fact -- but it is not the proper inquiry for a motion to dismiss,” which should simply question whether the plaintiff’s complaint includes enough facts “to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Regardless, there were genuine issues of fact, the court said, specifically whether to characterize U-verse as an evolution of its two-way phone service, or something conceptually different and more akin to one-way cable-TV service. “The line between television and telephone service was once quite concrete; it is now rather fuzzy,” Boggs wrote. “Balancing the requirements of restrictive franchising laws, drafted in a different era, poses a challenge for courts, as new technologies emerge that do not fit within the confines of increasingly antiquated terms like television and telephone. That inquiry, though, is for another day.” Judges Jane Stranch and James Carr backed the decision.