Since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, our nation has witnessed an explosion in the availability of broadband services and Internet access. In four short years, dozens of Internet backbone providers have blanketed the nation with over 1,000 high-speed Internet Points of Presence (POPs). As the enclosed maps show, now over 94% of all Americans live within 50 miles of a high-speed Internet backbone POP. What that means is that almost every business and Internet Service Provider in America can now easily increase the capacity of their connection to the Internet backbone.

At the Telecommunications Subcommittee’s May 25, 2000 hearing H. Russell Frisby, Jr., President of CompTel, presented the Competitive Broadband Coalition’s study of high-speed (DS-3, 45 megabits per second, or higher) capacity Internet Points of Presence. New entrants, such as Intermedia Communications, KMC Telecom, McCleodUSA and Touch America are extending the Internet backbone to smaller communities throughout the country.

The remarkable growth in number of Internet backbone providers and the extension of high capacity connections to smaller towns and cities across the country is compelling evidence that Congress got it right when it passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The remaining challenge is the implementation of the Act’s provisions that open the local telecommunications marketplace to competition. Competition in the market for “last-mile” broadband connections to homes and businesses is entirely dependent on the Bell Companies and GTE fully implementing the Act’s local market opening provisions. HR 2420, HR 1685 and HR 1686 repeal those crucial local market-opening provisions for data communications services.

Therefore, on behalf of the members of the Competitive Broadband Coalition, I urge you to support competition and the accelerated deployment of local broadband and Internet access services by opposing HR 2420, HR 1685 and HR 1686.

Sincerely,

David Rubashkin
Managing Director

All Carrier Pop Map
USA POP Districts

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The Competitive Broadband Coalition members include the Association of Communications Enterprises (ASCENT), the Association for Local Telecommunications Services (ALTS), AT&T, the Commercial Internet eXchange Association (CIX), CompTel (Competitive Telecommunications Association), Cable & Wireless, Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), Montana Telecommunications Association, Personal Communications Industry Association (PCIA), Sprint, Touch America and WorldCom. More information can be found at http://www.competitivebroadband.org/1041/home.jsp