Arizona Telecommunications & Information Council (ATIC) Multitenant Building Telecommunications Access Study PREVIOUS CONTENTS APPENDIX 4
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Arizona Competitive Telecommunications Coalition (ACTC)Appendix 4: Submitted Position Statements
Association for Local Telecommunications Services (ALTS)
Bringing Telecommunications Competition to Tenants in Multi-Tenant Environments
White Paper - May 10, 1999 - Executive Summary
Nondiscriminatory telecommunications carrier access to commercial and residential consumers in multi-tenant buildings is critical to the development of facilities-based local exchange competition. Currently, some landlords can and do prohibit CLEC access to their building tenants. Still other landlords impose such unreasonable conditions and demand such high rates for access that competitive telecommunications service to their buildings is rendered uneconomic. The tenants in these buildings often are without recourse and cannot obtain access to competitive telecommunications options.
State laws do not help these tenants. Only two States - Connecticut and Texas - have statutes that require landlords to grant nondiscriminatory access to the telecommunications carriers from whom their tenants choose to take service. Moreover, market imperfections eliminate the possibility of relying on the marketplace to resolve the problem. A federal solution is warranted.
The FCC possesses ample authority under the Communications Act to eliminate this nationwide barrier to competition. Most importantly, Section 2(a) provides the Commission's subject matter and in personam jurisdiction over all interstate and foreign communications by wire and radio, and to all persons engaged within the United States in such communication. The sweeping definitions of radio and wire communication in the Communications Act include even items and services incidental to interstate wire communication. The Commission has successfully exercised this expansive and flexible basis of authority in the past, and should do so again in the context of telecommunications carrier access to building tenants. To enable all tenants to receive the benefits of competition, the FCC should adopt federal nondiscriminatory building access rules and apply them in those States lacking nondiscriminatory building access statutes.
The FCC's rules should require that landlords grant telecommunications carriers reasonable, nondiscriminatory, and technologically neutral access to their buildings for the purpose of providing service to tenants within those buildings. Such access should expressly include access to rooftops, vertical and horizontal riser cables, utility closets/telephone equipment rooms (and the cross-connects therein) and to the intra-building wiring between the cross-connect and the customer's premises. The access should include both commercial and residential multi-tenant environments.
In addition, the Commission should prohibit exclusive access arrangements between a carrier and a landlord. The Commission should also prohibit the imposition by landlords of penalties or charges on tenants for exercising their choice in telecommunications carriers. Finally, landlords should not be permitted to condition access on the presence of actual customers within the building.
In exchange for access, landlords should be permitted to receive compensation that is reasonable, nondiscriminatory and technologically neutral. These rates should be related to costs. Moreover, landlords must not be permitted to impose revenue sharing arrangements on carriers as a condition of access (although carriers and landlords should be permitted to enter into voluntary agreements of this sort insofar as they do not impair access by competing telecommunications carriers).
Carriers should be required to assume installation and damage costs. Moreover, although space constraints remain a largely theoretical issue, the Commission should be prepared to address legitimate and demonstrable space constraints (and the concomitant need to deny access) if and when they arise.
Given the established need for relief from this competitive barrier, and the immediate and manifest growth in competition that will result from requiring nondiscriminatory telecommunications carrier access to multi-tenant buildings, the Commission should adopt and implement federal access rules promptly.
(Excerpted from document file available at http://www.alts.org/uploads/PR.5.13.testimony.doc)
Multitenant Building Telecommunications Access Study PREVIOUS CONTENTS APPENDIX 4
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Arizona Competitive Telecommunications Coalition (ACTC)