This is one decision I can totally applaud– FCC is banning exclusive phone deals for apartments. In other words, you can pick whatever phone company you want and not be restricted to the “agreements” building owners have with phone companies. I think for once FCC has taken a consumer-first decision. Housing and real estate groups are bitching and moaning… of course they would. What would be great if FCC extends this to broadband as well. For instance, I would love to buy my broadband from Ethernet-based service provider, WebPass and not the two current choices of Comcast and the phone company. [Fixed the bad Web Pass URL. Sorry folks]
FCC Gives Apartment Dwellers Freedom To Choose Their Phone Company —
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6 comments so far
10:28 AM PT
In France, the the incumbent phone company, France Telecom, is required to leave some space for switches and pipes of competitors, whenever they hook up a new building or neighborhood. France has some of the lowest long-distance and broadband subscription rates in the world.
10:57 AM PT
I don’t think anyone is stopping WebPass. More likely they don’t have the resources to go after MDU customers, where the wiring can be expensive. Just look at cable. FCC put an end to exclusives there last year, but I have yet to see an apartment complex being served by multiple providers. Companies are in no hurry to overbuild. If you aren’t already passed by the physical plant of multiple companies, these FCC rulings will do you no good.
11:00 AM PT
You will want to correct the link to the Ethernet-based Internet provider. The provided link goes to a vending machine operator. You want http://www.web-pass.com.
11:37 AM PT
Your link to webpass appears to go somewhere else entirely that is not an ethernet-based ISP…
12:02 PM PT
I think you mean http://www.web-pass.com/, not http://www.webpass.com/.
8:50 PM PT
What phone company? I really would like to see a graph of the number of customers each of the major phone companies has had over the past 10 years. I would bet that with the tremendous availability of cell phones, the decline in customers using wired service has been phenomenal.
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