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To: Scrapps who wrote (9188)	6/8/2000 11:02:00 PM
From: TechMkt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9236

Feds To Baby Bells: Let DSL Firms Share Lines (06/08/00, 6:50 p.m. ET) Independent digital subscriber line services, competing with regional Bell operating companies, received a helping hand Thursday when the Federal Communications Commission ordered Baby Bells to share their lines. To date, DSL providers such as Covad Communications (stock: COVD) and NorthPoint Communications (stock: NPNT) had to pay most Baby Bells to lay a special new copper line to each house that wanted the upstarts' DSL services. The FCC has ordered Baby Bells to open their lines to DSL competitors and charge them only to deliver the service over their countless copper lines. "Line-sharing will open up a whole new market -- residences -- to these DSL competitors," said Beth Gage, a director at research and consulting firm TeleChoice. Employers can start thinking seriously about rolling out telecommuting programs, because home-based workers will have access to much more bandwidth than even the fastest modem. Although users shouldn't expect DSL prices to drop immediately, the line-sharing deal will help the DSL providers compete with Baby Bells, Gage added. DSL service typically costs $40 a month. Line-sharing should also help address the painful issue of DSL availability. IT executives have long complained that they can't get the service where they need it, the same problem that plagued ISDN starting in the mid-1980s. Both services are largely hamstrung because they usually aren't available beyond several thousand feet of the serving office. Line-sharing has been embraced already this week. BellSouth (stock: BLS) signed a line-sharing agreement with NorthPoint, under which it will share its telephone lines in its nine-state region. "This pro-competitive agreement will speed and broaden availability of high-speed Internet and broadband services throughout our region," Jere Drummond, BellSouth's vice chairman, said in a statement. The regional Bell operating company had already signed a line-sharing agreement with Covad in April.