The efficacy of structural separations relates directly to the question of what mechanisms should be put into place now to ensure that Bell Atlantic continues to satisfy the 14-point checklist into the future, and that authority for Bell Atlantic to enter the Massachusetts interLATA market would truly be in the public interest. The Department's preliminary work in this docket has focused primarily on the first task above, ensuring that the ILEC has the demonstrated capability of meeting its obligations under the Act. Ameritech Michigan 271 Order 394. The structural separation of Bell Atlantic's wholesale and retail operations may be another. This concept of structural separation is in some ways akin to the notion of anti-backsliding remedies.
Structural separations can complement a scheme of robust anti-backsliding remedies.
By ensuring that Bell Atlantic's wholesale operations are run as a separate business, structural separations should reduce if not eliminate the incentive of those operations to discriminate against CLECs in ways subtle or blatant. Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, Joint Petition of Nextlink Pennsylvania, Inc., et al. and Joint Petition of Bell Atlantic Pennsylvania, Inc. , Docket Nos.