To this end, the Commission established a definition of an essential facility. The Commission also mandated that certain facilities, functions or services which did not meet the definition of an essential facility, but for which the competitive supply is very limited, also be unbundled and priced on the basis of rating principles established for essential facilities, for a period of five years, commencing 1 May 1997. In light of conditions in the local exchange market, the Commission considers, on a preliminary basis, that it would be appropriate to retain, for a longer period of time, the mandatory unbundling and the current pricing treatment of the ILECs' near essential facilities in order to facilitate competitive entry into local exchange markets. For the same reasons, the Commission also considers that it may be appropriate to treat copper loops as essential facilities. Procedure Proc dure 5.
Parties are to indicate in the notice, their email address, where available.
If parties do not have access to the Internet, they are to indicate in their notice whether they wish to receive disk versions of hard copy filings. All interested parties may file comments with the Commission on any matter within the scope of this proceeding, serving a copy on other interested parties, by 25 August 2000. Interested parties may file reply comments with the Commission, serving a copy on other interested parties, by 11 September 2000. Where a document is to be filed or served by a specific date, the document must be actually received, not merely sent, by that date. Parties wishing to file electronic versions of their comments can do so by email or on diskette.