When Cable and Telephone operators wished to have themselves exempted from the competitive requirements of the Telecommunications Act, they pressured the FCC to declare that Internet access was not a telecommunications service, which it did in 2002. With this ruling, Telephone companies could give their own in-house operations pricing advantages over outside competitors, who frequently would be offered line access at double the rate for high speed internet access services on the same line. Telephone companies such as AT&T also require that customers of third party ISPs purchase AT&T-branded landline services in order to provide DSL. Cable companies, on the other hand, offered no access at all to their data lines. These policies would be illegal if Internet were ruled a Telecommunications Service, and telephone companies were forced to act as Common Carriers.