Practice Areas & Industries: Carlton Fields, P.A.

Practice/Industry Group Overview

The world travels on the "information superhighway" -- locally, nationally, and globally. The advent of the Internet alone has transformed the telecommunications industry into the single most critical component in today's world economy. Every aspect of daily life is touched and shaped by telecommunications, from entertainment to medicine to national security, spawning new technologies, new industries, and new regulatory issues. The landmark Telecommunications Act of 1996, for example, had enormous impact on the telecommunications field, eliminating many rate controls and artificial regulation barriers. This encouraged local telephone service providers to become the long-distance providers, cable television providers to get into the local telephone business, and on and on. Carlton Fields attorneys have extensive experience in all aspects of telecommunications law, in all courts, representing all categories of telecommunications providers, including telephone, traditional radio and television broadcast, cable, Internet, satellite, and others.

The burgeoning growth of technology has spawned a whole new generation of telecommunications services and companies. Accompanying that growth is a whole new set of telecommunications issues - and complex bodies of rules, regulations, and laws to accompany them.

At Carlton Fields, we understand that telecommunications law is really about taxes, rights of way, litigation, intellectual property, real estate, employment, consumers, government regulators, and much more. Accordingly, we provide experienced, comprehensive litigation, regulatory, strategic and transactional services on the entire range of complex legal issues facing the industry.

Services Available

Our clients include Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILEC's), Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLEC's), and wireless and long distance providers of telecommunications service. We have extensive experience representing clients before federal and state courts, as well as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Florida Public Service Commission. We represent telecommunications providers before local governments on matters including telecommunications tax audits, cell tower siting, right-of-way franchise ordinances, zoning and permitting, and others. And the Firm regularly deals with condemnation proceedings relating to parties' leasehold interests in communications towers.