Still fighting against telco's limiting other ISP

[Amanda Yilmaz]

On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:36 -0400, "Yanni Chiu" <yanni-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> In another mailing list I'm on, someone is defending Bell's position. 
> I'd like to have the opinion of people here. His contention is that 
> wholesalers just resell Bell's internet service, and thus are not true 
> competitors. He contends that a true competitor would locate equipment 
> inside Bell's central office switches, so as to gain access to the "last 
> mile", and that equipment would connect to the Internet completely 
> independently of Bell (instead of the current wholesale ISP situation). 
> He add's that such a competitor may face obstacles from Bell when trying 
> to gain access to the central offices though.
> 
> So I'm wondering, is Bell required to provide access to their central 
> office switches to allow competitors to access the "last mile"?
> 
> Is it reasonable that only the "last mile" should be open to 
> competition, or should the "last 10 miles" be open (i.e. the 10 miles 
> that separate all the central switches from the big internet pipes).

I remember reading an article a few months ago detailing an emerging problem which could eventually make access to the central office moot: those roadside telephone wiring cabinets (I don't know the technical name, sorry) which are increasingly popping up, particularly in new residential developments.

As I remember it, these essentially function like remote extensions of the central office, and in cases where one of these is deployed, the "last mile" connection is only available from this box, not from the central office itself. Additionally, as I remember it, the article stated that competitors do *not* have to be provided access to these new cabinets, and it surmised that Bell was building more and more of these with the specific intent to deny competitors access to the "last mile" in the future.

I've been trying to locate the original article again with no success so far, but if I find it again sometime within the next couple of days, I'll post a link to it here (with apologies for any wrong information I've given here, if any).

Amanda
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