If the FCC returns special access rates to reasonable levels, it will "generate billions of dollars of savings across the broadband economy, will spur investment and jobs, improve wireless deployment and enhance rural broadband coverage at a time we need it most," the group added.

AT&T questioned the need for changes. About 95 percent of special access services are slow 1.5M bps connections, Bob Quinn, AT&T's senior vice president for federal regulatory affairs, .

These "legacy, copper-based" services needs to be retired as carriers move to an all-Internet Protocol infrastructure, Quinn wrote.

"Apparently, we are going to go backwards and try to figure out the perfect way to price-regulate a technology that is fast becoming obsolete," he wrote. "Instead of creating a path to fiber, significant infrastructure investment by all carriers, job creation and achieving the nation's broadband goals, we are going to instead pursue policies that will result in less fiber, less infrastructure investment, less job creation, and less broadband. It's not that we haven't pulled this kind of transformation before."

Representatives of Sprint and NoChokePoints disputed AT&T's suggestion that 95 percent of special access services are 1.5M bps connections. Faster services are also part of special access, they said.