Pursuing Competition in Local Telephony : The Law and Economics of Unbundling and Impairment

This paper surveys the impairment standard of Section 251(d)(2)(B) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and its content as it has been interpreted by both the FCC and the Courts. The Congressional standard relating to unbundling clearly pointed to its impact on each CLEC's output, and relevant Court decisions have repeatedly upheld this view. We develop a formal theoretical model of impairment that relates element Availability to CLEC output. This theoretical model is then subjected to empirical tests