Charter Goes After Massachusetts, Hawaii Opposition to Effective Competition Petition

The argument that the LEC test includes a facilities requirement because of a single parenthetical reference to facilities in applicable federal law "ignores basic rules of grammar and statutory interpretation," said Charter Communications in an FCC docket 18-283 posting Monday. It said the parenthetical structure and wording makes clear Congress was discussing MVPDs other than LECs or affiliates. It said it's "perfectly logical" for Congress to put facilities requirements only on MVPDs that aren't LEC affiliated, and the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable (MDTC) is ignoring the FCC's own interpretation of "channels" as meaning programming sources rather than the physical platform over which that programming gets delivered The operator said DirecTV Now is readily available to most of Massachusetts despite Worcester Community Cable Access (WCCA) arguments otherwise since more than 80 percent of the state's households subscribe to broadband. The company is seeking a declaration of effective competition in those states based on the availability of DirecTV Now (see 1809170020). WCCA emailed that the Charter petition is "bad for our community ... has a potential to be bad for public access centers like WCCA TV, bad for free speech, and bad for an open and participatory system of government in the long run." Hawaii and MDTC didn't comment.