The real estate industry is piling on to ensure that forced building access remains a dead issue in Washington.

A coalition of real estate organizations has banded together to lobby, advertise and conduct studies to argue that telecommunications carriers should not have the "right" to enter commercial buildings over the objections of real estate owners.

For the last year, telecommunications companies have argued -- so far unsuccessfully -- that forced access is necessary so that tenants can get a wide range of price-competitive telecommunications services, from local and long-distance to high-speed broadband access. Without forced building access, they claimed, real estate owners would deal with only a handful of telecom carriers, resulting in high prices and little or no choice for end-users.

While the telecom industry made several arguments in lobbying both Congress and the Federal Communications Commission for forced building access, the only justification that interested FCC commissioners was the competition argument.

Which makes this week's news a virtual death-knell for proponents of forced building access. According to a new survey of businesses in multi-tenant commercial buildings, end-users are highly satisfied with their telecom services and in almost all cases have their connectivity needs met.

The survey was conducted in January by Knowledge Systems & Research, Inc. (KS&R). Although funded by the Real Access Alliance, a coalition of real estate firms and others opposed to forced building access, the survey's results are unmistakable.

About 94 percent of tenant respondents indicated that telecommunications services currently being offered in their buildings meet their needs, while only 1 percent said building management had ever denied requests to obtain services from a provider not already serving the building.

The survey was conducted among a nationwide random sample of senior decision-makers for telecom services in businesses that are tenants of multi-tenant commercial buildings. There were 454 interviews, giving the survey a 4.6 percent margin of error.

The multi-family housing sector also is arguing that forced access would do nothing to increase competition.

"There's much more competitiveness without forced access than there would be with forced access, especially in the residential market," said Jim Arbury, vice president for the National Multi Housing Council and the National Apartment Association.

Arbury asserts that the telecommunications industry only alleges to be concerned about competition in local phone service or cable service.

"These people say that want to be sure that grandma has a good phone system," Arbury said. "They're not in it for that. It's not about the telephone. They just want access for broadband services. That's what the battle is all about."

What's more, Arbury says that the vast majority of multi-family tenants would be ignored by telecom providers now pushing for forced access. These providers are really only interested in office buildings and high-end luxury apartments in major metro areas, he said.

"When they're speaking to legislators, these guys are trying to convince them that theyş re trying to help close the digital divide," Arbury said. "They have no intention of doing it. It wouldn't even make sense in their business plan."

According to Arbury, the average apartment tenant spends $50 or less on telecommunications products per month. But only tenants spending $120 or more per month are an attractive target for most firms pushing forced access.

Back in the commercial world, real estate firms are sticking by their survey.

"The survey suggests that today's tenants are savvy about telecommunications choices and are quite satisfied with the services offered in multi-tenant buildings, " says Roger Platt, who represents the alliance. "The findings the Alliance has shared with the FCC underscore our longstanding assertion that building owners put tenant needs first by offering cutting-edge telecommunications services."

Well, they may not be putting tenants' needs first. But surely most building owners understand that they must provide access to high-end telecom services to keep their tenants happy and in place.

Regardless of the motives of commercial and multi-family real estate, their piling on of statistics, surveys and at least purported goodwill may prove the permanent undoing of efforts to force building access.

For more articles by Lesley Hensell, please press here.

Published: February 23, 2001

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Lesley Hensell covers commercial real estate and financial issues for Realty Times. Based outside of Dallas, Lesley works with high-tech and real estate clients as an independent marketing and public relations consultant. She also writes for several publications, including the Dallas Morning News. E-mail Lesley at: lhensell@earthlink.net