James W. Tomlinson

Jim Tomlinson draws on more than 25 years of experience in the communications industry to help clients with a wide range of telecommunications and cable issues, including federal, state, and local regulatory matters, programming network issues, and contract negotiation and enforcement. Jim’s clients include wireless carriers, VoIP providers, competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), cable and broadband providers, and cable programming networks. As a former senior in-house counsel for an international telecommunications provider, Jim has extensive practical experience with commercial and regulatory legal issues for telecommunications clients. Prior to practicing law, Jim was a systems engineer, corporate account manager and network planner with a large telecommunications company, giving him an in-depth understanding of broadband networks and business issues facing communications companies.

Jim is a core member of DWT’s Lifeline program team, which advises eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs) on a wide variety of legal and business operational issues involving the federal Lifeline program. Jim regularly assists top-10 ETCs and smaller carriers obtain state and federal ETC designations; respond to audits and regulatory inquiries, maintain regulatory compliance and advocate their positions with key Lifeline decision-makers at the FCC.

Jim counsels competitive telecommunications, VoIP and broadband service providers on a wide range of telecommunications competition and broadband policy matters, including market entry, licensing and tariff obligations, commercial disputes, and subscriber privacy issues under federal and state communications law. His work in this area involves drafting subscriber agreements, privacy policies, acceptable use policies and other related documents for communications entities.

Jim also advises cable television, telecommunications, and wireless providers on outside plant deployment issues. Jim regularly performs complex pole attachment rate calculations and analysis. Jim has negotiated numerous pole attachment and conduit agreements and represents communications companies before the FCC and state regulatory agencies in regulatory litigation and rulemakings involving pole attachments.