Is Line Sharing a win?
Line Sharing has been legally possible since the beginning of 2000. But, the requirement that CLECs must arrange complex access, pricing and troubleshooting agreements with every single Telco in their footprint means that there are signifcant barriers to entry of this market. Only the largest CLECs (Covad, NorthPoint and Rhythms) have made some progress with line sharing in some markets meaning that for most consumers, nearly a year after the FCC inked the rules, there is still no ADSL choice beyond the local Telco. Even for areas that are line sharing enabled, the CLECs have not yet put together with their ISPs self-install kits.. so a CLEC line-sharing order may still involve more visits (1) than a telco self-install order (0). Finally, line-sharing makes the CLEC DSL products look remarkably similar to the Telco products, but not only are they are priced higher, but involve the home visit. In addition, we can safely predict a higher percentage of install failures may be encountered
