The so-called Baby Bells can't be ordered by states to offer stand-alone digital subscriber line, or high-speed Internet to customers who buy their voice services from competitors, the Federal Communications Commission has ruled, announcing the decision formally March 25.
The matter involved BellSouth, the Atlanta-based telephone company which said Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Kentucky regulators forced them to offer stand-alone DSL to customers whose telephone services were provided by competitors leasing BellSouth lines.
BellSouth applauded the ruling, a 3-2 vote that was one of the last FCC rulings made before Michael Powell's tenure as chairman ended in mid-March. "The ruling helps provide the regulatory assurance necessary to justify the levels of investment required to support the high-speed networks and services of tomorrow," said vice president for executive and federal regulatory affairs Jonathan Banks in a formal statement.
The FCC vote went down party lines, with Powell and fellow Republicans Kevin J. Martin—now FCC chairman—and Kathleen Abernathy voting for it and the two Democrats on the panel, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, dissenting from it in part while backing it elsewhere.
Copps and Adelstein said in a joint statement that the FCC ruling "unwisely flashes the green light for broadband tying arrangements. Because we believe this is an area where the Commission should proceed with caution, we cannot support the outcome." They said that could hurt consumers and competition.
But the twosome said they supported efforts to reinforce what they called non-discriminatory number porting, including that between wireline and cable carriers. "Congress was clear," Copps and Adelstein said, "that number portability is a basic duty of local exchange carriers…this decision accurately clarifies (that) requirement."
Qwest Communications among the four largest local telephone carriers now offers stand-alone DSL, while the largest of the four, Verizon Communications, plans to offer DSL as a stand-alone later in 2005.
