The rise of Ethernet-over-copper technology has some competitive carriers urging the FCC to rethink rules it authored four years ago for the retirement of copper lines.

In January, Covad Communications, XO Communications and other CLECs petitioned the FCC to change its requirements for incumbents retiring copper in their networks. As Bells push fiber deeper into their network, they can decommission the copper between central offices (COs) and remote terminals that they are forced to wholesale to competitors, cutting off rivals from access to those terminals.

They're required to notify the FCC and competitors when they do so. And competitors can object, but only if they're already using the copper in question (not if they planned to), and even then, they can only object to the retirement scheduling, not the retirement itself. XO and company propose that incumbents be required to prove that each retirement “serves the public interest.”

Part of the reason the FCC freed incumbents from having to unbundle fiber was to give them incentive to invest in broadband infrastructure upgrades. CLECs are now making a similar appeal, arguing that embedded, readily available copper is their incentive to invest in new, faster broadband technologies such as Ethernet-over-copper, a technology that “did not exist in the network three years ago” when the FCC wrote its unbundling rules, the CLECs' petition said.

XO is now about halfway through the 60-market deployment of DSL bonding equipment it began earlier this year to enable Ethernet-over-copper services between 10 Mb/s and 10 Gb/s. And Covad launched a 3 Mb/s bonded T-1 service earlier this month that is available throughout its footprint of nearly 2000 COs.

Meanwhile, Verizon has reported a flood of copper retirement this year after virtually none last year. Most of it is happening in small towns and rural areas, Verizon said, where it is pushing fiber from COs to remote terminals to offer advanced DSL to remote customers. XO isn't serving those areas, Verizon said, and the retirements aren't impacting CLECs or disrupting service.

The CLECs' pleas for revising the copper retirement process often veer into complaints against copper retirement itself. For example, Heather Burnett Gold, senior vice president of external affairs for XO, pointed out the need for more clarity in the notification process because it can sometimes be hard to tell whether a given retirement notice refers to specific routes or an entire CO. But she added, “However, once a route is out of a CO, it can be difficult to sell services from that CO … how do you tell a salesperson, ‘This block is OK, but the next block is not’? It would be too complicated to further differentiate where we can and cannot sell.”

Freeing fiber from unbundling requirements was not only supposed to spur Bell fiber buildouts, it was also supposed to cue CLECs to build their own infrastructure, said Scott Randolph, director of federal regulatory matters for Verizon. Four years later, with Bell fiber rollouts booming, he said, “These CLECs haven't built their facilities. They want to get the FCC to reverse those decisions, so they can continue to use the copper.”

Though the public comment period for this debate ended in early April, the Small Business Association wrote the FCC this month arguing that small businesses are on XO's and Covad's side. The FCC won't say whether it plans to take further action on the matter.