Real Estate Article: "What's Fair in the Fight for Fair Building Access"
1/1/2001
This article presents both sides to the debate over fair building access: "open access," according to the proponents of a legislative solution or "forced access," according to the real estate industry. The recent measures enacted by the FCC are described as an initial step in ensuring that building owners do not unreasonably deny competing telecommunications service providers' access to customers in residential and commercial buildings. At the heart of the argument for legislative access is providing competitive choices to consumers and tenants so that they in turn can obtain state of the art services and garner the benefit of competitive pricing. Proponents of open access respond that landlords are more interested in extracting huge fees at the expense of the tenant/consumer, and who point to building owners combining to form building-centric providers or building local exchange providers (BLEGs), which expose independent telecom providers to the possibility of unfair competition that only a government solution can mitigate. Over time, the market will drive landlords to provide competitively priced options for alternative services in order to maximize rents and maintain occupancy, perhaps with governmental encouragement in the form of incentives.
