Gov't to review CLEC access to Project Pronto

Some competitive local exchange carriers are breathing a sigh of relief after the government late last week agreed to review the way SBC Communications is rolling out mass-market DSL under the name Project Pronto.

In a report released Thursday night, the Federal Communications Commission reopened its previously settled rules for how Bell companies must provide switch collocation and local-loop unbundling.

The FCC said it's doing so because "some incumbent local exchange carriers" have decided to build fiber partway between their central offices and residential neighborhoods, and then offer DSL service over the remaining copper loop.

Those plans raise questions as to whether CLECs have room to put DSL equipment in the small neighborhood remote terminals, according to the FCC. It also puts in question whether CLECs will be able to continue to rent the entire copper loop from the central office to the customer premises if the Bell company no longer needs it, the FCC said.

Although the FCC only cited SBC's Project Pronto in a footnote, it was widely understood that the move is in reaction to dozens of pleas by CLECs to put Pronto under the microscope. The $6 billion Project Pronto is by far the largest telco move to provision DSL from fiber-fed neighborhood terminals. SBC is promising to cover 80% of its 13-state territory with this kind of asymmetrical DSL service over the next three years.

The FCC requested public comment on:

• Whether incumbent telcos should tell competitors if they plan to retire central office-to-premises copper loops, and who should pay for loop maintenance if only the competitors want to use it.

• Whether CLECs should have the opportunity to buy the copper plant from the telco before it's decommissioned.

• Whether it's feasible for CLECs to install DSL access multiplexers in neighborhood terminals, or whether competitors should be allowed to rent the telco's own remote-terminal DSLAM ports. That's particularly key because the FCC last year eliminated DSLAMs ports from the list of central-office equipment telcos must rent, though they must provide collocation for CLECs' own DSLAMs.

• Whether competitors should have access to individual optical wavelengths if dense wave division multiplexing systems are placed on the fiber portion of the local loop.

• Whether telcos should provide multiple ATM classes of service on the fiber backhaul from DSL neighborhood terminals to the central office. That's another key issue because SBC has only promised ATM's lowest service class, called available bit rate.

The FCC did not tip its hand on how it would rule on these issues, saying only it wanted to receive comments by Sept. 18. But the Association for Local Telecommunications Services, a CLEC trade group, took heart. "We're confident the FCC will take the necessary action to guarantee CLEC access" to telco remote-terminal facilities, ALTS general counsel Jonathan Askin said in a statement.