Telecommunications

What the federal rule actually protects

The FCC's Over-the-Air Reception Devices rule, known as OTARD, stops an association from enforcing a restriction that impairs a resident's installation, maintenance, or use of a covered antenna or satellite dish, but only on property within that resident's exclusive use or control, such as a balcony, patio, or a yard reserved to one unit.

"Any restriction, including but not limited to any state or local law or regulation... that impairs the installation, maintenance, or use of" a covered device "is prohibited to the extent it so impairs."

Source: 47 CFR 1.4000, the OTARD rule, Federal Communications Commission

Most covered satellite and fixed-wireless antennas are protected only up to one meter in diameter. Television broadcast antennas have no size cap under this rule. Larger dishes and equipment used for a commercial or business service generally fall outside this protection.

Where the protection stops

OTARD does not turn a shared roof, a building's exterior wall, or a common lawn into open territory for dishes. Those are common area the association jointly owns and controls, and a resident does not get a federal right to install equipment there. Your CC&Rs, not this rule, govern what happens on true common property.

Even within a resident's own space, a board can still say no to a specific installation if the restriction is a narrowly tailored, evenhanded safety rule, applied the same way to comparable objects of similar size and weight, or a historic-preservation rule that actually applies because the property is listed on, or eligible for, a historic register. A restriction cannot be more burdensome than necessary to meet that objective. A blanket "no exterior modifications" rule aimed at dishes generally will not survive this test.

Whose wire is it anyway

Federal rule also draws a line for ordinary phone and data wiring called the demarcation point: the spot where a telecommunications carrier's own wiring responsibility ends and the wiring inside the property begins.

"The point of demarcation and/or interconnection between the communications facilities of a provider of wireline telecommunications, and terminal equipment, protective apparatus or wiring at a subscriber's premises."

Source: 47 CFR 68.3, definitions, Federal Communications Commission

Wiring on the subscriber's side of that point is customer-owned or controlled wiring. If a phone or data line stops working somewhere inside a unit, past where the carrier's outside cable connects, that repair is generally the owner's problem, not the carrier's and not automatically the association's. Whether it is the owner's or a common element under your state's rules on shared wiring is a separate question worth checking against your own governing documents.