Special Access in Local Exchange Market

On August 22, 2012, the federal communications commission (FCC) released report and order regarding special access for local exchange carriers. In that document, the FCC suspend, on an interim basis, the rules regarding grants of pricing flexibility for special access services which adopted in 1999 because of unpredictable results and also failure in supporting competition in today’s special access markets.

Let's talk about what is special access.

Special access service  (also called dedicated service) is a service that provides dedicated high capacity connections to deliver data usually from one point to another therefore it is also called as point-to-point communication. This service is not switched circuit, it provides no dial tone, and cannot respond to a dialed telephone number. Special access connects customers/end users to a central office in order to be connected to another network or passed to another central office.

In the past, dedicated service was used particularly related to long distance call (LDC). This service connects an end user to point of presence (POP) an interexchange carrier (IXC). Technological progresses and demand growth has changed special access usages. Currently, special access links between end user locations, end user and competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) networks, also end users and internet service providers (ISPs).

Nowadays it continues to play a critical role in the economy. Many activities highly rely on this type of service especially for businesses including banks and financial companies, schools and libraries, government institutions, and also wireless service providers. Business entities use special access to connect and provide communication among their branches, access to the internet, and including the automatic teller machines (ATM).

Schools, libraries, and government agencies depend on this access to connect to the internet. In addition, wireless service providers employ this connection to link cell towers to their wireline backbone networks (so called wireless backhaul).

We then might know that special access leaves big problems.