The Coop: Who We Are

This local Colorado-based Internet cooperative has filed comments with the FCC. Shouldn't you do the same?

[May 8, 2002]

Dear Editors:

The Ruby Ranch neighborhood is a residential neighborhood of 41 homes in unincorporated Summit County, Colorado. Neither the incumbent LEC (Qwest) nor the principal cable company (AT&T) provides broadband Internet access in our neighborhood —or for that matter, anywhere in Summit County. Qwest's voice telephone service is of such poor quality that the fastest modem Internet speeds available to neighborhood residents using dialup service is 26 Kbps.

About one year ago, neighborhood residents formed the Ruby Ranch Internet Cooperative Association, a non-profit corporation, to provide "always on," high-speed Internet access to ourselves. We purchased a DSLAM and DSL modems, but we cannot provide our service without leasing subloops from Qwest to connect our DSLAM with individual houses. We expected (naively in retrospect) that Qwest would facilitate our rental of it subloops because:

• We are good customers of Qwest (averaging three lines per household)
  
  
• Qwest has ample subloops within our neighborhood available for lease (it is using only 120 of the 400 available subloops)
  
  
• Qwest would be able to expand the capacity of its serving central office because we would move Internet traffic from dialup lines connected to its serving switch to our separate DSL network
  
  
• Our rental of unused subloops would enable Qwest to enjoy a return on an investment that it would not otherwise realize
  
  
• We would not compete with Qwest given Qwest's decision not to offer DSL to our neighborhood

Qwest nonetheless refused to lease its subloops the Coop needed on reasonable terms and conditions. Qwest has taken similar unreasonable positions with other small DSL providers.

Qwest's unreasonable positions, coupled with its "take it or leave it" bargaining strategy, forced the Coop into an arbitration proceeding.

Examples of unfair positions: Among other things, Qwest initially demanded that the Coop, with its 12 initial customers and with no desire to collocate on Qwest premises, obtain an $11 million insurance policy—while simultaneously telling the Colorado FCC in other proceedings that no insurance is necessary if the competitive carrier does not collocate on any Qwest premises. Qwest demanded that Coop pay a quote preparation fee of $1,709 (later reduced to $1,109) to install a screw terminal block that it has conceded would cost approximately $150. Qwest initially demanded we pay $21.32 monthly for subloops with a length of less than one mile when its central office is four miles away and Qwest charges only $14.92 for complete dial tone service.

Qwest lied under oath and fragrantly contravened explicit FCC requirements. Though its bad-faith tactics, Qwest was successful in delaying the Coop from launching its services for nearly a year. The arbitration proceeding has been completed, and the Coop is finally scheduled to launch service around June 1, 2002.

Examples of Qwest lying under oath: Qwest stated under oath that its cross-connection box did not have sufficient capacity to accommodate the screw terminal block the Coop needed—until the Coop showed Qwest a photograph of its box demonstrating that it had ample spare capacity. As a second example, although the FCC has explicitly ruled that an interconnecting carrier may ask the ILEC to provide cost support, Qwest refused to provide for seven months the cost support that the Coop repeatedly requested, waiting until one week before the date of the arbitration hearing to hand over limited cost-support data.

The Coop is able to launch its broadband services only because it is today classified as a telecommunications carrier and as a result, is able to obtain subloops as UNEs pursuant to Section 251(c)(3) of the Act. If, however, the FCC adopts its tentative proposal, the Coop apparently would be classified instead as an information service provider—although the Coop provides no information services. Such a classification would preclude the Coop from taking advantage of the UNE statute and would presumably enable Qwest to "pull the plug"—thereby relegating neighborhood residents once again to 26 Kbps modem service.

Congress made clear in its 1996 Act that would-be providers of DSL should be able to rent UNEs such as unbundled loops and subloops from ILECs on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms. As the Coop has learned, and as others have described, Qwest has developed to an art form its ability to appear to meet the letter of the 1996 Act while flouting the spirit of that law. Despite Qwest's efforts, the Coop will be able to bring DSL to a neighborhood that Qwest feels is unworthy of Qwest's DSL service, solely because of the 1996 Act. It would be a great tragedy if the FCC were to carry out its apparent plan of denying the Coop (and other would-be DSL providers) the ability to rent such UNEs.

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