Editing Demarcation point (section)

==History==
Prior to [[Federal Communications Commission]] (FCC) regulations separating the ownership of customer premises telecommunication equipment from the telephone network, there was no need for a public standard governing the interconnection of customer premises equipment (CPE) to the United States' telephone network, since both the devices and the “local loop” wiring to the central office were owned and maintained by the local telephone company. 
Concurrent with the transfer of existing "embedded" CPE to the customer (customers could buy new telephones at retail or could continue to lease their existing equipment from the company), it was necessary to provide a standardized way to connect equipment, and also provide a way to test the phone company's service separately from the customer's equipment.

The ability of customers to buy and maintain their CPE and attach it to the network was stimulated by lawsuits by equipment manufacturers, such as the [[Hush-a-Phone v. FCC]] suit. Additionally, computer companies’ ability to offer enhanced services to customers was likewise constrained by the telephone companies’ control of all devices connected to the network. As the Bell telephone companies were themselves restricted from offering such enhanced services, there was little momentum to advance the state of the art.

The newly developed equipment-network separation was codified in Part 68 of the Code of Federal Regulations in the United States and later in comparable regulatory standards in other countries.

The physical and electrical interconnection is called the demarcation point, or Demarc, which includes one or more customer-accessible jack interfaces; previously, the interface was typically hard-wired and often in a telephone company-owned locked enclosure.

The premises-vs.-network separation in the United States, insofar as it affected the former [[Bell System]], was independent of AT&T's divestiture of the local telephone companies on January 1, 1984. However, CPE interconnection and [[Bell System divestiture]] were part of a larger restructuring of the domestic telecommunications industry which took place during the 1980s and are commonly, if inaccurately, seen as one event. The historical Bell System domination of the United States telecommunications industry was also the de facto standard for other telephone companies such as [[GTE]] and other “independent” telephone companies.