Summary: From January 1996 through April 2000, major incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) sold nearly 832,000 access lines, 68 percent of which were in rural areas. This figure already exceeds the total number of lines sold during the previous four years. Although the commercial availability of asymmetric form of the digital subscriber line (DSL) technology did not begin for nearly 10 years after its development, telephone companies have rapidly deployed DSL over the past three years. ILECs intensified their asymmetric DSL deployment in recent months in response to both the asymmetric DSL deployment by competitive local exchange carriers and the cable industry's foray into Internet access with cable modem service. GAO reviewed customer complaints to state and federal regulators about the quality of local telephone service and found that complaint levels were higher for five of the eight major ILECs. According to telephone companies' own customer surveys for 1996 through 1999, there is no clear trend in the overall level of customer dissatisfaction.
