What is Open Access?
“Open Access” means that the owner of a network must make it available to all users under the same terms and conditions. The network owner cannot interfere with content that travels over the network. By contrast, in a closed network, the network owner can prevent anyone it wants to from using the network, can determine what traffic it will or won’t carry, and can set priorities based on where the traffic comes from or to whom its going (or for any other reason).
The telephone network is an “open access” or “open” network. As a result of this openness the Internet grew and flourished. Any internet service provider (ISP) that wants to offer service can do so, despite the fact that the phone companies that own the lines offer competing services.
The FCC itself has acknowledged the importance of the an open network in the development and growth of the Internet. As Jason Oxman wrote in Office of Plans and Policy Paper #31, “The FCC and the Unregulation of the Internet”:
The Internet has grown up over this country’s telephone lines, a technological development that has made it possible for virtually any American to join the online community. Because of the vast expanse of telephone penetration in this nation, and because of the openness of that network, the Internet has exploded. Every American with a phone line and a computer can be part of the Internet. The phone network has historically been open in two senses: phone customers are permitted to access any Internet service provider of their choosing, and those customers are permitted to attach their own equipment to the phone line, allowing them to use modems to transform their phone lines into their own information superhighways.
Open access across the telecommunications network has driven the deployment of innovative and inexpensive Internet access services.
OPP #31 at p.5
Nor was the FCC’s Mr. Oxley alone in his observations of how the open access of the telephone network has fueled the astounding growth of the Internet. Many others have observed how the current open access architecture of the Internet has been critical to its development and widespread deployment.