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Jim Barthold
An Iowa Supreme Court decision has raised the expectations of communities hoping to offer converged voice, video and data services.
The court on Jan. 29 withdrew its unpublished October 21, 1998 opinion in the case of the Iowa Telephone Association and the City of Hawarden, Iowa and granted Hawarden's petition for a rehearing. The October ruling had reversed an Iowa District Court ruling upholding a city's authority to operate a communications utility that provides multiple services.
"It's very, very seldom in Iowa history that the Supreme Court has granted a rehearing," said Graham Gillette, a spokesperson for Pioneer Holdings LLC who is helping Hawarden implement multiple services.
Pioneer is a partnership between Long Lines Ltd., Northwest Iowa Power Cooperative and MCI WorldCom that works with rural communities to set up coordinated communications services.
"There are so many small towns in Iowa that are in this business or want to be in this business. They feel it is the only way they will ever get the services that they need to compete for jobs and everything else," said Gillette.
Pioneer is lobbying the Iowa State Legislature "to specifically insert language that allows municipalities to operate" telephony services, Gillette said. The court, meanwhile, has not rescheduled a time for its new ruling.
"It's just the telephony part that's really in question here," he said. "There are a number of cities in Iowa that operate cable television and when they began to want to enter the telephone market there was kind of a hue and cry from some of the telephone companies."
Those companies include US West, GTE and Frontier.
Gillette said the Iowa communities believed that they were free to compete under laws passed by the state legislature.
"Our hope is that the court says this is exactly what the legislature intended and will allow the companies to do this," he concluded.
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