No single solution exists to provide competitive access to fiber-...

the Central Office and End-Users in Next-Generation Networks” Thurs. by Common Carrier Bureau and Office of Engineering & Technology. Bureau Chief Dorothy Attwood said meeting was to focus on technical issues and not to discuss legal or policy issues, but several on panel said both issues were interrelated. “From a network perspective it is very difficult or impossible to separate technology from policy,” said John Lube, SBC Gen. Mgr. Network Services-Regulatory. “For us to deploy equipment is an engineering decision, but it will be made with a clear understanding of policies set by the FCC and how new regulations affect all broadband technologies.” Early in DSL rollout, SBC predicted CLECs would ask to colocate standalone DSLAMs in remote terminals, Lube said. SBC spent “several million” dollars in effort to upgrade controlled environment vaults and huts, but “to his knowledge” only one CLEC had colocated in SBC remote terminals. It isn’t economically feasible for ILEC to pre-equip entire remote terminal line capacity with cross-connect fields, he said. Access methods are chosen on case- by-case basis. Verizon Dir. Technology Engineering Planning Charles Kiederer said that in outside plant environments, each one is different: “We need to be careful here to not oversimplify and try to find one solution. As engineers we can solve any problem given enough time and money, but sooner or later we get yanked back to economically reality.”