2 March 2001
On 23 February 2001, France Telecom appealed certain measures of ART's decision no. 01-135 dated 8 February 2001, which asked that France Telecom modify its reference offer for access to the local loop.
ART considers that access to the local loop has now entered an effective implementation phase. Therefore, in the decisions it takes on this subject, it takes care to define measures which will facilitate the concrete and rapid application of unbundling, in accordance with the objectives of the decree dated 12 September 2000 and of Community Regulation dated 18 December 2000.
It is in this spirit that ART examined without delay the appeal submitted by France Telecom. The examination of the appeal confirmed ART's initial analysis and led it to reject most of France Telecom's requests, except for one: it considered that France Telecom was justified in asking that ART modify its decision dated 8 February with respect to the deadline for installation of the tie cable for distant co-location, which has been extended to two months in order to take into account specific constraints that can exist when civil engineering works are required.
With the few questions raised by the appeal resolved, ART continues to analyse the new reference offer published by France Telecom on 23 February, with respect to the provisions of its decision dated 8 February, and will make a statement soon as necessary. In any case, it will be very attentive in coming months to monitoring the implementation of the unbundling process and will initiate a complete evaluation of the application of the reference offer before the end of the year.
