Response to another OFTEL consultation document (22 June 2000) We have written a response to OFTEL's consultation document, Access to Bandwidth: Indicative prices and pricing principles, issued in May 2000. Frankly, the response is generally hard going, as the OFTEL document dives straight into economic modelling of the local loop. However, there is one argument which is easy to grasp and, luckily, forms much of our response. OFTEL, on mandating local loop unbundling (taking the copper wire from the local exchange to you away from the sole control of BT), stated that competitors to BT would only be able to offer narrowband (voice, telephone modem) and broadband (xDSL) services on the same line. This causes a number of problems, the most obvious one being that, if a user wanted to stay with BT for narrowband but take up someone else's offer of broadband services, he or she would have to install a second line. We argue very strongly that this should not be the case; it should be possible to run narrowband services from company A and broadband services from company B on the same line (line sharing). Note that, in August 2000, OFTEL accepted this argument. In the USA local loop unbundling passed into law in 1996. However, progress on actually doing unbundling was so slow, and the disputes between incumbent telecommunications operators (ILECs) and their new competitors (CLECs) so bitter, the FCC stepped in and mandated line sharing in late 1999. We hope that OFTEL, which we sometimes feel is rather too dismissive of US experiences (as the regulatory environments are generally very different), will take notice this time and not make a potentially serious mistake.