ComTel to FCC: Adopt cable open access rules

(Telephony) The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should adopt at least minimal rules to ensure that cable networks are open to competing high-speed ISPs, the Competitive Telecommunications Association (CompTel) said in a comments it submitted last week.

The FCC is mulling over the open access issue – with comments due Dec. 1, replies due Dec. 12 and a ruling some time after that – and CompTel wanted to be sure its membership was covered, said president H. Russell Frisby Jr.

"We look at the next few years and we see that you're going to have two incumbent monopoly pipes into most homes and to many businesses. That would be the telephone pipe and the cable pipe," Frisby said. "We think that both should be open."

Although the FCC is only ruling on cable networks, Frisby said CompTel's comments cover DSL as well.

"You have the incumbent Bell operating companies who argue that if cable is not made open then they shouldn't have to open up things such as DSL and the rest of the networks," Frisby reasoned. "It's important. We see the whole world going broadband."

Frisby said that the CompTel comments answer those who argue that DSL will create natural competition for cable and force open networks.

"We're saying no," he said.

Open access, he emphasized, can be used "as a leverage to make sure that DSL remains competitive."

In the end, he said, CompTel members would benefit because they would be "riding on the pipe. Our members don't tend to be incumbent monopolists."