Reaction was divided on the FCC’s special access order, which...

commission is “moving forward to address the flawed framework that has been in place for the special access market.” CompTel hopes the data collection and further notice of proposed rulemaking “leads to rapid, fact-based evaluation and correction of special access market failures,” he said. The Computer and Communications Industry Association said the data request would “at last expose a long-standing vestige of monopoly in the telecom world that must be dealt with.” American businesses must “no longer [be] held hostage to a complex web of inflated rates for wired broadband connections with unreasonable and anticompetitive terms and conditions,” said CCIA Vice President Cathy Sloan. NARUC said the order was long overdue. “I am hopeful, with this order, that we will finally get answers and find out just how competitive the market for these services is,” said NARUC Telecom Committee Chairman John Burke of Vermont. But AT&T Senior Vice President Bob Quinn said the commission should devote its time and resources to “developing policies that promote investment” in infrastructure that can deliver IP-based, high bandwidth services to business customers. “Measuring the level of competition for aging, TDM-based 1.5 Mbps services that increasingly are being supplanted by faster, more efficient IP-based services, is misplaced,” he said. The Internet Innovation Alliance questioned the FCC’s continued focus on special access given that business consumers have many more options than they did when the rules for special access were put in place. The commission “should be asking itself whether it is worthwhile to undertake such a large examination of competition for a service that is rapidly being replaced by an IP-based technology and whether its resources would be better spent creating a clear path forward for the deployment of this newer technology across America,” IIA said.