Broadband open access is an issue of

policy debate Policy debate is an American form of debate competition in which teams of two usually advocate for and against a resolution that typically calls for policy change by the United States federal government. It is also referred to as cross-examinat ...

telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

, regarding whether or not companies which own broadband telecommunication infrastructure (such as cable operators) should be required to provide access to their facilities for competing businesses which do not own physical infrastructure. The issue came to the fore in the U.S. in 1998, when

AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...

announced its plan to acquire TCI, then the nation's largest cable operator. It involved municipal and local governments, the courts,

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...

(the FCC), Congress, businesses,

industry association A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association, sector association or industry body, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry. An industry trade association partici ...

consumer advocacy groups Consumer organizations are advocacy groups that seek to protect people from corporate abuse like unsafe products, predatory lending, false advertising, astroturfing and pollution. Consumer Organizations may operate via protests, litigation, cam ...

, and many others. Similar issues arose in other countries such as the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

, and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. In the United States, cable operators were not required to provide access to their facilities to other competing businesses. However, local telephone providers with physical infrastructure, or incumbent local exchange carriers, had such an obligation. This asymmetrical scheme of regulation became a problem when the two industries' businesses came to overlap and the boundary between them eroded. This transformation of industrial landscape, often called

convergence Convergence may refer to: Arts and media Literature *''Convergence'' (book series), edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen * "Convergence" (comics), two separate story lines published by DC Comics: **A four-part crossover storyline that united the four Wei ...

, happened in the broadband

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

market. To make matters worse, the cable operators were the leading camp although local telephone carriers were burdened by the open-access obligation. Broadband high-speed internet has become a worldwide breakthrough for

telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

services. The service has become crucial for businesses to be able to communicate with customers and is on the verge of being a standard

public utility A public utility company (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and r ...

, rather than a luxury for residents. Although other services are still offered, like

dial-up Internet access Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telepho ...

satellite internet access Satellite Internet access is Internet access provided through communication satellites. Modern consumer grade satellite Internet service is typically provided to individual users through geostationary satellites that can offer relatively high dat ...

, broadband internet is the most convenient and fastest mode of telecommunications. With broadband open access, the popularity of this service is in great demand. The debate of making incumbent cable operators obligated to allow competitors to wire into their

infrastructure Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...

is comparable to the Bell Operating Company (BOC) issue that split into the

Regional Bell Operating Companies The Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC) are the result of '' United States v. AT&T'', the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust suit against the former American Telephone & Telegraph Company (later known as AT&T Corp.). On January 8, 198 ...

. Leading cable operators can easily avoid competition due to reasons such as lack of funding for those competitors to build their own backbone network, or even the lack of space available. For the past couple of years now, President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

has set out to try to resolve these issues. On February 10, 2011, he announced plans to expand wireless Internet access. This plan intends to provide high-speed wireless services to 98 percent of Americans or more. The idea behind this is to increase education among Americans, build businesses and profit, and support

state-of-the-art The state of the art (sometimes cutting edge or leading edge) refers to the highest level of general development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field achieved at a particular time. However, in some contexts it can also refer to a level ...

technology for state officials. In terms of broadband open access, the plan will be deployed by leading carriers of high-speed Internet. However, the debate may still remain of how this helps the incoming

service provider A service provider (SP) is an organization that provides services, such as consulting, legal, real estate, communications, storage, and processing services, to other organizations. Although a service provider can be a sub-unit of the organization t ...

or smaller companies that already exist. Will small companies earn profit if the country is provided Internet through the leading companies? Broadband open access has also brought on many questions of how services to competition is offered, such as

unbundled access Unbundled access is an often practiced form of regulation during liberalization, where new entrants of the market (challengers) are offered access to facilities of the incumbent that are hard to duplicate (e.g. for technical or business case reasons ...

services sold to the new company. This includes services that can be hard to duplicate. The concept is like what service providers offer their own customers and having

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

, voice, and Internet service bundled into one package. Any competitor may rent office space in an incumbent's central office, place equipment to interconnect with their network, or purchase other related services. The company can offer the same deal to a competing company requesting use of their network and facilities. The new entrant has a right to purchase access to the incumbent on an unbundled basis. Getting unbundled services means the new entrant has the opportunity to invest in its own network and therefore spend less on buying everything

wholesale Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers (wholesale businesses) and related subordinated services. In ...

. They are able to make a

profit Profit may refer to: Business and law * Profit (accounting), the difference between the purchase price and the costs of bringing to market * Profit (economics), normal profit and economic profit * Profit (real property), a nonpossessory intere ...

using their own equipment and do not have to spend it all on the incumbent hardware and software provided.

References

{{reflist Broadband

See also

References