Sonic is a small ISP that competes brilliantly with the big guys — so they're trying to throttle its business

For years, the big internet service providers have striven to hamstring competition across the telecommunications landscape. And in June 2018, they essentially asked the Federal Communications Commission to finish the job by repealing a rule granting competing phone and internet companies wholesale access to their copper-wire phone infrastructure. The industry petition argues that the rule is an “intrusive” regulation that has outlived its usefulness. Dane Jasper says the opposite is true — that the access to copper, which is guaranteed by a 1996 law, is what has enabled his small regional internet firm (Sonic) and others like it to continue rolling out high-speed broadband services to their customers, in competition with the big firms. Sonic and other small ISPs like it owe their business models to an obscure provision of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The act required the major phone companies to lease their copper wire infrastructure, on which phone service traveled, to competitors at a regulated price. This allowed hundreds of competitive companies, known as CLECs, for “competitive local exchange carriers,” to flourish by offering cheap, innovative phone service and expanding into DSL — that is, phone-line-based broadband access. Some, such as Sonic, have used revenue from their phone and DSL customer base to finance expansion into fiber internet service.