AT&T wants to see competitors' fiber maps as part of special access investigation

AT&T (NYSE: T) says that the FCC should provide all of the companies participating in the regulator's special access proceeding the ability to view fiber route maps that were required to be submitted, in order to illustrate that competition exists in the market.

In a filing, the telco said that the FCC has refused "to permit the parties to see and analyze the detailed fiber route maps that each competitor submitted in this proceeding (and to which the Commission alone has access)."

By providing access to the fiber maps, the participating companies would be able to better analyze where competition exists, the carrier said.

"AT&T believes that these data would confirm what the census block data that is available already show -- that special access competition is ubiquitous in the areas where there is special access demand," AT&T said. "But in light of the CLECs' insistence that competition exists only in buildings they already serve, the Commission should immediately permit all parties to gain access to the detailed fiber route maps, consistent with the highly confidential designations of such maps in the applicable protective orders, so that these claims can be fully vetted."

Although the FCC gave companies like AT&T, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and others access to the data the commission collected, the regulator refused to provide access to the fiber route maps.

The FCC said that providing access to the fiber maps would create "risks to critical infrastructure," so it instead provided a table that identifies each census block that contains competing fiber facilities upon which [the proposed] rule is based" so that there can be "an exchange of views, information, and criticism between interested persons and the agency."

AT&T countered that the census block data "show that competitors have deployed their own competitive facilities in the vast majority of census blocks nationwide that contain special access demand, and that those census blocks, in turn, account for virtually all of the total special access connections and business establishments."

AT&T added that providing access to the fiber route maps "will allow parties to supplement the record evidence refuting the CLECs' argument that their fiber facilities are generally so far away from buildings with special access demand that the Commission should assume that CLECs cannot compete for customers in buildings unless they have already extended laterals."

For more:
- see the FCC filing (PDF)

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