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By Heather McLean, 15 March 2002 17:00

NEWS US cable internet operators will not have to share their networks with other companies to increase competition in the market, the US communications regulator said. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) laid down the law to force cable companies to share network capacity with other ISPs when AOL, which owns most of the cable in the US, merged with Time Warner. David Rivington, director of strategy at British ISP Bulldog, supported the FCC's decision. He said: "Infrastructure-based competition is good to get people to build networks. Without it, everyone is left to sell the same brand of rice, just with slightly different packaging." Rivington added: "The FCC's removal of its initial regulation is a way of saying to ISPs that they can get into the market just as easily over DSL." Bernt Ostergaard, telecommunications analyst at Forrester Research, said those operators that have invested in a network infrastructure will justifiably not be happy to share with the competition. However, the decision is only good for operators, Ostergaard said: "This is protecting those that have already invested in infrastructure in a time when no one else wants to spend that amount of money, but it doesn't help the consumer, who will be left in a market dominated by just a few players for some time."