View Rule

In its Application for Review, Indian Peak sought review of decisions by the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and the Media Bureau to deny its petition for protection under the Over-the-Air-Reception-Device (OTARD) rule of antennas it had placed on the roof of a single family home in a residential neighborhood.  Indian Peak was operating the home as a commercial communications site.  The Order on Review denies in part and dismisses in part the application for review.  In denying the application for review, the Order on Review clarifies that to qualify for protection under the OTARD rule, the equipment must benefit a human end-user on the premises.

Section 207 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 directed the Commission to promulgate regulations to prohibit restrictions that impair a viewer’s ability to receive video programming services through devices designed for over-the-air reception of television broadcast signals, multichannel multipoint distribution service, or direct broadcast satellite services.  To meet this requirement, the Commission adopted the OTARD rule.  The Commission subsequently expanded the scope of the rule so that it now covers wireless broadband antennas including hub and relay antennas.  Beginning in 2004, when the rule was expanded to cover equipment designed to receive wireless broadband signal, the Commission began using the term customer in place of viewer.

The facts pled by Indian Peak were vague but indicated that the property was largely an unmanned communications site with equipment that was controlled remotely by offsite personnel.  In the Order on Review, the Commission clarifies that the use of the term viewer in section 207 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 signaled Congress’s intent to protect the rights of a human being to receive signal, and therefore to qualify for protection under the OTARD rule an applicant must plead facts sufficient to establish that the equipment provides signal to a human end-user on the premises.  The Commission’s use of the term customer in place of viewer does not alter this basic requirement of the rule.