• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, August 11, 2005

Three organizations--consumer advocates Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America, and media reform group Free Press--are calling on Congress to reverse last week's ruling by the Federal Communications Commission that telephone companies need not lease DSL lines to competitors, as well as June's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that cable companies don't have to share their broadband lines with rivals.

The two recent rulings, taken together, create the potential for duopolies where consumers' broadband choices will be limited to either one cable provider or one telecom DSL carrier, said Free Press Communications Director Craig Aaron.

"Where competition exists, it has been facilitated by federal requirements that incumbent telecommunications service providers offer 'open access' to competitors," the group stated in the report, "Broadband Reality Check," issued Wednesday.

The report concluded that if neither telecoms nor cable companies are required to share their lines, the result will be a duopoly that "ensures higher prices, slower connection speeds and poorer customer service."

The groups also challenged a recent report by the FCC that found high-speed Web access in the United States surged by 34 percent last year to 37.9 million lines, up from 28.2 million in 2003. The Broadband Reality Check took issue with the FCC's defining high-speed as 200 kpbs, stating that such a rate "is barely enough to users to receive low-quality streaming video" and "certainly insufficient for users to originate high-quality video."