A Federal Judge has shot down an AT&T lawsuit upon the city of Louisville, one of many company bids to slow down Google Fiber’s approach to the region. AT&T accused the city back in February of last year after Louisville streamlined its service pole devotion rules to speed up the approach to fighting for broadband services to the city. Necessary ISPs have long exploited the absurdly bureaucratic pole addition process to slow opponents, and Louisville’s “one-touch make quick” changes streamlined the method significantly.
A Federal Judge forced out AT&T’s suit this week, asserting that it was well within Louisville Metro’s government to manage its public rights-of-way.
Google Fiber had driven for the rules, which let a permitted, insured contractor move any ISP’s gear equipped they get prior permission, and pay for any potential damage.
Previously, if a contestant wanted access to the pole, they wanted to wait for each individual ISP to sign off on they move their own things. That means it already took numerous extra months, and large official ISPs had a credit for dragging their heels on the machine moves to make life as hard as possible for competitors.
AT&T sued the city following the pretense that it was concerned about additional outages, but if you’ve wasted any time watching the way AT&T does business, it becomes quickly clear the lawsuit was just extra effort to hamstring opponents in the telecom space. Verizon, which not-coincidentally doesn’t play with Google Fiber in any of its east shore markets, has approved the rule changes as needed and helpful in promoting broadband deployments.
AT&T is assumed to appeal the ruling.
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