Paper Chase and Curtis, et al,
Unquestionably, competition is a mandate here. It must happen, and if line sharing is the way to that end, then so be it, as you both note. But let's not have any delusions about this. Bridging the chasm in this fashion is going to be horrendously painful, if not litigiously dragged out. The pains in crossing the chasm might for some time appear to be as excrutiating as the agony and despair of not having an alternative, in the first place, and this may be so for quite some period of time.
Those of us who've been on the street for a while have seen this movie before, going back to the days in the Late Seventies when the then "other common carriers," or OCCs, were first entering the long distance markets, when local loops were first made available on a resale basis. Ditto for shared access arrangements on Type 2 and 3 CLEC offerings (where resale of the ILEC's facilities come into play), more recently.
My office is within eyeshot of the Broad St. Central Office in the financial district of NY City. We are literally two blocks away from it. I received an email yesterday from my head office there, giving me a status update on the pending arrival of our DSL line which we ordered in early June, five months ago. In our case we ordered it from a large company, let's call then Saturday Night Fever, or SNF.
SNF has a subsidiary with a DSL product, we'll call it Purple. Purple is installed through the collaboration and various point solution inputs of no fewer than four companies, working in tandem with one another. They even use a local contractor whose specific job is to install the wall jack, only. All of which serves to demand full time attention to who is coming and going, and in what logical order, creating an even more calamitous situation than you could imagine.
I don't have the time nor the inclination right now, but at some point I would like to chronicle what has ensued during the latter three of these five months (Curtis, the trouble tickets you were referring to). Which, when complete, will undoubtedly leave some of you here to think that I am making things up. Believe me, if my imagination was as extensive, and as rich, to match what has transpired in this case, I would be writing science fiction, along side the best, and not posting here.
Later, Frank |
