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The Supreme Court held 3/24/04 that Section 101(a) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C. § 253, does not “affect the power of States and localities to restrict their own (or their political inferiors’) delivery of [telecommunications] services.” Under the Act, States and localities may not “prohibit[] the ability of any entity” to provide interstate telecommunications services. With this decision, the Court interpreted the term “any entity” to encompass private entities and not public entities, although the Court declined to establish a precise line between the two categories. The Court reasoned that the text “any entity” does not necessarily include public entities because “‘any’ can and does mean different things depending on the setting.” In addition, federal preemption of state and local prohibitions on public entities would lead to “strange and indeterminate results,” owing to the fact that such entities still would require funding and, in the case of some political subdivisions, an independent source of authority to provide telecommunications services. Finally, the alternative interpretation would “interpos[e] federal authority between a State and its municipal subdivisions” and thereby would contravene the rule that, absent a plain statement to the contrary, federal statutes should be “read in a way that preserves a State’s chosen disposition of its own power.” This decision is important to the entire telecommunications industry.

The NAM is part of the High Tech Broadband Coalition, which joined with the Fiber-to-the-Home Council in an amicus brief 10/24/03 on the merits of this appeal. The brief argued that municipalities are a critical force driving the deployment of broadband in rural America, and that Congress intended the Act to promote competition and accelerate deployment. The Court's decision allows states to restrict the deployment of broadband systems by local governments.