The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld...
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision Friday against an arrangement between a Virginia land developer and telecommunications provider OpenBand that made the company the exclusive video provider for a residential subdivision. “This is the…
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first case to determine whether courts can strike down exclusive easements under the Federal Communications Commission’s 2007 Order banning exclusive video access arrangements,” said a release from Wiltshire and Grannis, the law firm that represented Loudoun County’s Lansdowne on the Potomac Homeowners Association against OpenBand and several subsidiary companies. OpenBand’s parent company, M.C. Dean, did not comment on the decision. According to the release, OpenBand has used the exclusivity arrangement with Lansdowne on the Potomac’s developer “to prevent any competitive provider of wired video services from accessing or offering communication services to residents in the development’s approximately 2,000 homes.” According to the 4th Circuit decision, OpenBand created a web of multiple agreements among numerous subsidiary companies, such as OpenBand at Lansdowne LLC., as part of a complicated network of contracts that Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson called in his decision “an artifice to evade the FCC order” and “an elaborate game of regulatory subterfuge.” “The district court correctly pierced these arguments to recognize that OpenBand had set up just the kind of non-competitive video service monopoly -- with all the attendant dangers of high prices and poor service -- that the FCC banned.” Friday’s ruling permanently enjoins OpenBand from enforcing the terms of its exclusivity agreements in the subdivisions, the release said (http://fcc.us/Z3S5ln).