What is a wholesalers role?
Wholesalers such as Covad, Rhythms, and NorthPoint buy copper local loops that run from telephone companies to customers’ premises. They also rent space in telephone company central offices, where they place their DSL equipment. Specialized DSL equipment in the telephone company offices aggregate traffic from multiple DSL users and send it in one high-speed stream to the Internet service provider or competitive local exchange carrier. In addition, the incumbent telephone companies such as Verizon sell their DSL service wholesale to Internet service providers, who resell it to residential consumers. Wholesalers install the DSL modems at customer premises for service providers that sell directly to end users. See figure 1 for a sample DSL configuration. Figure 1 A sample DSL configuration.
