Wire centers serving more than 38,000 business lines or at least 4 fiber based CLEC's (this means their own fiber, I think) do not have to offer DS1 CO to CO loops to a CLEC. For DS3/Dark Fiber it is 24,000 business lines or 3 fiber based CLEC's. This is interoffice transport, the CLEC's transport between its colos, which they lease from the LEC per their interconnect contract. It can be quite inexpensive. Why bother coloing if you can't get good transport between the colos ? Much the same for customer loops from your colo. Unbundling, IIRC, is what the xLEC's got from the Telcom act. The loops and fiber. These unbundeled elements can only be accessed by colocation with the LEC, for most cases. For wire centers that meet the limits, key here is it has to be both sides meetings the limits for interoffice transport (CO to CO), a colocated CLEC cannot get ds1, ds3, and dark fiber to build their network. We are in several Qwest CO's in New Mexico, this is one of the few times it has been good to live in NM, in the context of telecommunications. Fiber based xLEC's, not many, and we only have one city that can be considered big. The questions we had are work were about the business lines. Does it include CLEC lines ? If is does not, business lines are where the LEC's have seen a big decrease and any counts are suspect as they may be old. So is the xLEC supposed to buy interoffice transport from the fiber based folks in the colo ? Can they get loops, too ? I am not sure about how this effects DS0's. Voice and HSDSL. DSL line share is gone so you have to do voice to offer DSL, in the wholesale context. What are they up too ? They limit competition in locations where there are several major providers or a lot of business customers. -- James H. Edwards Routing and Security Administrator At the Santa Fe Office: Internet at Cyber Mesa jamesh@cybermesa.com noc@cybermesa.com (505) 795-7101