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Challenging The Telco-Cable Cross-Ownership Ban: First Amendment And Antitrust Implications For The Interactive Information Highway, Laura Land Sigal

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Note explores options available to decisionmakers by analyzing Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. v. United States (C & P), which set an important precedent regarding a telephone company's First Amendment right to provide video programming over its own facilities in its local service area. C & P, a Bell Atlantic Corporation subsidiary providing local telephone service in Northern Virginia, claimed that the cable-telco cross-ownership ban, codified at § 533(b) of the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984, infringes unconstitutionally upon its First Amendment right to freedom of expression. On November 21, 1994, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth …