Section 38:38 Broadband Access.
I. In this subdivision:
(a) ""Access tariff'' means the fee charged on a monthly or annual basis to broadband carriers for access to the broadband infrastructure.
(b) ""Areas not served'' means any part of a municipality without a wireless or facilities based broadband service or a wireless or facilities based broadband service provider. Wireless shall not include subscription satellite service.
(c) ""Broadband'' means the transmission of information, between or among points specified by the user, with or without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received, at rates of transmission defined by the Federal Communications Commission as ""broadband.''
(d) ""Broadband carrier'' means any provider of broadband services, except aggregators of broadband services, as defined in section 226 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
(e) ""Broadband infrastructure'' means all equipment and facilities, including all changes, modifications, and expansions to existing facilities, as well as the customer premises equipment used to provide broadband, and any software integral to or related to the operations, support, facilitation, or interconnection of such equipment, including upgrades, and any installation, operations and support, maintenance, and other functions required to support the delivery of broadband.
(f) ""Broadband service'' means the offering of broadband for a fee directly to the public, or to such classes of users as to be effectively available directly to the public, regardless of the facilities used.
(g) ""Open network'' means any broadband infrastructure which is open to any third party users in a nondiscriminatory manner on a fair and equitable basis using publicly available access tariffs for services.
(h) ""Open network interfaces'' means the technical and operational means, manners, and methods for any third party access to the broadband infrastructure, which shall be provided on the basis of generally acceptable industry standards available at the time of access.
II. A municipality may use its broadband infrastructure for the purpose of providing an open network and assuring that third party access is available in accordance with current state and federal regulations.
Source. 2006, 225:6, eff. July 31, 2006.