Unbundled access is an often practiced form of regulation during liberalization, where new entrants of the market (challengers) are offered access to facilities of the incumbent, that are hard to duplicate (e.g. for technical or business case reasons). Its applications are mostly found in network-oriented industries (like telecommunication, mail and energy) and often concerns the last mile.
Unbundled access differs from Bitstream access in that the incumbent offers fewer services at the last mile and the backhaul is not a part of the services.
Famous quotes containing the word access:
“In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.”
—Saul Bellow (b. 1915)