WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission moved Thursday (Oct. 14) to deregulate phone companies' fiber-optic networks.
The agency voted to exclude fiber-optics networks from regulations governing traditional phone lines. The FCC said its decision was consistent with court decisions relieving incumbent local phone companies of obligation to lease fiber-to-the-home networks to competitors.
The FCC said regulations requiring leasing discouraged incumbent carriers from deployment fiber networks.
The ruling also means incumbent local carriers are not obligated to build time-division multiplexing (TDM) capability into new or existing packet-based networks that never had TDM capability.
