FCC Chairman Ajit Pai circulated a draft order that would start the process of killing the unbundling of copper facilities. This unbundling was originally ordered with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and unleashed telephone and broadband competition in the US. This new law was implemented before the introduction of DSL and newly formed competitors (CLECs) were able to use telco copper to compete for voice and data service using T1s. The 1996 Act also required that the big telcos offer their most basic products for resale.
The FCC noted that their proposed order will “not grant forbearance from regulatory obligations governing broadband networks”, meaning they are not going to fully eliminate the requirement for copper unbundling. This is because the FCC doesn’t have the authority to fully eliminate unbundling since the obligation was required by Congress – the FCC is mandated to obey that law until it’s either changed by Congress or until there is no more copper left to unbundle. Much of the industry has been calling for an updated telecommunications act for years, but in the current dysfunction politics of Washington DC that doesn’t look likely.
The big telcos have hated the unbundling requirement since the day it was passed. Eliminating this requirement has been near the top of their regulatory wish list since 1996. The big telcos hate of unbundling is somewhat irrational since in today’s environment unbundling likely makes them money. There are still CLECs selling DSL from unbundled copper and generating monies for the telcos that they’d likely not have otherwise. But the hatred for the original ruling has become ingrained in the big telco culture.
The FCC’s proposal is to have a three year transition from the currently mandated rates that are set at incremental costs to some market-based leased rate. I guess we’ll have to see during that transition if the telcos plan to price CLECs out of the market or if they will offer reasonable lease rates that will continue to offer connections.
This change has the possibility of causing harm to CLECs and consumers. There are still a number of CLECs selling DSL over unbundled copper elements. In many cases these CLECs operate the newest DSL electronics and can offer faster data speeds than the telco DSL. It’s not unusual for CLECs to have 50 Mbps residential DSL. For businesses they can now combine multiple pairs of copper and I’ve seen unbundled DSL products for businesses as fast as 500 Mbps.
There are still a lot of customer that are choosing to stay with DSL. Some of these customers don’t feel the need for faster data speeds. In other cases it’s due to the fact that DSL is generally priced to be cheaper than cable modem products. At CCG we do surveys and it’s not unusual to find anywhere from 25% to 45% of the customers still buying DSL in a market that has a cable competitor. While there are millions of customers annually making the transition to cable modem service, there are still big numbers of households still using DSL – it’s many years away from dying.
There is another quieter use of unbundled copper that still has competitors worried. Any competitor that offers voice service using their own switch is still required by law to interconnect to the local incumbent telcos. Most of that interconnection is done today using fiber transport, but there still is a significant impact from unbundled elements.
Surprisingly, the vast majority of the public switched telecommunications network (PSTN) still uses technology based upon T1s. There was a huge noise made 5 – 10 years ago about having a ‘digital transition’ where the interconnection network was going to migrate to 100% IP. But for the most part this transition never occurred. Competitors can still bring fiber to meet an incumbent telco network, but that fiber signal must still be muxed down to T1 channels using T1s and DS3. The pricing for those interconnections are part of the same rules the FCC wants to kill. CLECs everywhere are going to be worried about seeing huge price increases for the interconnection process.
The big telcos have always wanted interconnection to be done at tariffed special access rates. These are the rates that often had a T1 (1.5 Mbps connection) priced at $700 per month. The unbundled cost for an interconnection T1 is $100 or less in most places and competitors are going to worry about seeing a big price increase to tie their network to telco tandems.
It’s not surprising to see this FCC doing this. They have been checking off the regulatory wish list of the telcos and the cable companies since Chairman Pai took over leadership. This is one of those regulatory issues that the big telcos hate as a policy issue, but which has quietly been operationally working well now for decades. There’s no pressing reason for the FCC to make this change. Copper is naturally dying over time and the issue eventually dies with the copper. There are direct measurable benefits to consumers from unbundling, so the real losers are going to be customers who lose DSL connections they are happy with.