Local loop unbundling is the regulatory process of allowing multiple telecommunications operators to use connections from the telephone exchange to the customer's premises. The physical wire connection between the local exchange and the customer is known as a "local loop", and is owned by the incumbent local exchange carrier. To increase competition, other providers are granted unbundled access.
Digital subscriber line is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), the most commonly installed DSL technology, for Internet access.
In telephony, the local loop is the physical link or circuit that connects from the demarcation point of the customer premises to the edge of the common carrier or telecommunications service provider's network.
The telecommunications policy of the United States is a framework of law directed by government and the regulatory commissions, most notably the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Two landmark acts prevail today, the Communications Act of 1934 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The latter was intended to revise the first act and specifically to foster competition in the telecommunications industry.
A competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), in the United States and Canada, is a telecommunications provider company competing with other, already established carriers, generally the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC).
An incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) is a local telephone company which held the regional monopoly on landline service before the market was opened to competitive local exchange carriers, or the corporate successor of such a firm.
Local number portability (LNP) for fixed lines, and full mobile number portability (FMNP) for mobile phone lines, refers to the ability of a "customer of record" of an existing fixed-line or mobile telephone number assigned by a local exchange carrier (LEC) to reassign the number to another carrier, move it to another location, or change the type of service. In most cases, there are limitations to transferability with regards to geography, service area coverage, and technology. Location Portability and Service Portability are not consistently defined or deployed in the telecommunication industry.
A naked DSL, also known as standalone or dry loop DSL, is a digital subscriber line (DSL) without a PSTN service — or the associated dial tone. In other words, only a standalone DSL Internet service is provided on the local loop.
Orcon Limited is a New Zealand telecommunications company. It is New Zealand's fourth largest Internet service provider (ISP). In 2013 it had a 5% share of the fixed line market.
In the telephony business, sub-loop unbundling (SLU) is a type of unbundled access whereby a sub-section of the local loop is unbundled. In practice this often means the competitor placing a small street cabinet with a DSLAM, next to a telco local copper aggregation cabinet or serving area interface and using a "tie cable" to connect to the last part of the local loop into customers' homes. Lyddington in Rutland was the first example of SLU in the UK when local provider Rutland Telecom unbundled the cabinet to offer VDSL broadband.
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. Its applications are mostly found in network-oriented industries and often concerns the last mile.
Bit-stream access refers to the situation where a wireline incumbent installs a high-speed access link to the customer's premises and then makes this access link available to third parties, to enable them to provide high-speed services to customers. This type of access does not entail any third-party access to the copper pair in the local loop.
Due to economy of scale property of telecommunication industry, sharing of telecom infrastructure among telecom service providers is becoming the requirement and process of business in the telecom industry where competitors are becoming partners in order to lower their increasing investments. The degree and method of infrastructure sharing can vary in each country depending on regulatory and competitive climate.
The prevalent means of connecting to the Internet in Germany is DSL, introduced by Deutsche Telekom in 1999. Other technologies such as Cable, FTTH and FTTB (fiber), Satellite, UMTS/HSDPA (mobile) and LTE are available as alternatives.
Geographic Number Portability Unbundled Line Metallic Path or GLUMP is a product related to Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) in the Republic of Ireland. Geographic Number Portability (GNP) is the process of a user moving their number to a new address. Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) is the process of a line being used by a 3rd party to provide a service on the incumbent's exchange or line. Comreg and eircom, the incumbent telecom company, have named the combination GLUMP.
Traffic pumping, also known as access stimulation, is a controversial practice by which some local exchange telephone carriers in rural areas of the United States inflate the volume of incoming calls to their networks, and profit from the greatly increased intercarrier compensation fees to which they are entitled by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Verizon Communications Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission, 535 U.S. 467 (2002), is a United States Supreme Court case in which Verizon Communications argued that the FCC had an unreasonable way for setting rates for leasing network elements. It held that the FCC can require state commissions to set the rates charged by incumbents for leased elements on a forward-looking basis untied to the incumbents' investment and that the FCC can require incumbents to combine elements of their networks at the request of entrants.
USTAv.FCC is the 2004 court case in which the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the Federal Communications Commission's Triennial Review Order (TRO). The court's decision is based on the Telecommunications Act of 1996 section 251 which defines unbundled network elements (UNEs) for incumbent local exchange carriers and competitive local exchange carriers.
Total element long-run incremental cost (TELRIC) is a calculation method that the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) to use to charge competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) for interconnection and colocation, effectively imposing a price ceiling. A variant of long-run incremental cost (LRIC), it "measures the forward-looking incremental cost of adding or subtracting a network element" from a hypothetical system. This allows the incumbent to recover a share of the fair value of their inputs in the long run.
In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission Computer Inquiries were a trio of interrelated FCC Inquiries focused on problems posed by the convergence of regulated telephony with unregulated computing services. These Computer Inquiries created rules and requirements designed to prevent cross subsidization, discrimination, and anti-competitive behavior from companies such as Bell Operating Companies (BOCs) to enter the enhanced services market.
