Opcenter: Competitors Seek Building Access
Posted: 08/2000
Competitors Seek Building Access
By Kim Sunderland
Competitors have unleashed a revised effort to quell problems they encounter in gaining access into commercial and multitenant buildings by asking federal regulators to adopt laws that would require building owners to open up their properties to them.
The FCC
(www.fcc.gov) and Congress are expected to act on the issue during 2000, but competitors want a solution sooner rather than later. The real estate industry, however, thinks government oversight is ludicrous.
More than 20 associations, companies and consumer interests seek to force building owners to comply with the provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that require nondiscriminatory access for competitors. These telecom providers and consumer
organizations joined June 21 to launch the Smart Buildings Policy Project (www.buildingconnections.org),
a coalition attempting to eliminate barriers to building access, and, in turn, promote provisioning of advanced broadband services.
Among the members are carrier associations ALTS
(www.alts.org) and the Competitive Telecommunications Association
(www.comptel.org).
The SBPP released a letter to FCC chairman William E. Kennard signed by 42 CLECs, long-distance companies, ISPs, equipment manufacturers and consumer groups urging the commission to use its authority to provide reasonable and nondiscriminatory access to rooftops and inside wire in multitenant environments (MTEs), also known as multitenant units (MTUs).
According to the letter, “The absence of federal rules governing access to buildings permits building owners to exert considerable control over the development of facilities-based competition … by denying competitive carriers access to the space necessary for the equipment required to provision facilities-based telecommunications and broadband services.”
The SBPP members already have taken several steps in Congress and at the state level to encourage the opening of MTEs to competitive suppliers of telecommunications. SBPP now wants the FCC to adopt rules allowing reasonable and non-discriminatory access to MTEs.
In the meantime, the Real Access Alliance
(www.realaccess.org), which represents the interests of 1 million members seeking unrestricted, free market opportunities to negotiate with telecom providers on behalf of their tenants.
“It’s a shame,” says spokesman Roger Platt, “that successful, highly profitable telecom companies want the government to give them an advantage over other providers who negotiate for access to privately owned buildings in the free market.
“The sheer numbers of contracts being signed every day between property owners and telecom providers to deliver the technologies tenants want shows that the market is working and that new, burdensome regulations are completely unwarranted,” Platt says.
The Building Owners and Managers Association International
(www.boma.org), which represents commercial real estate owners and managers, says that since passage of the Telecom Act, critical business relationships have formed between property management professionals, tenants, telecommunications service providers and building owners.
And while each has a clear goal in brokering access to technology, BOMA admits that they haven’t always agreed on how to reach all of their goals simultaneously.
