Small internet providers expect a helping hand from the Federal Communications Commission Thursday, a move that could spur competition and perhaps lower prices. But the commission is also considering a more sweeping proposal that would hurt upstarts to the benefit of industry giants like AT&T.

Both issues revolve around how much access upstarts should have to facilities and equipment owned by their bigger rivals. Thursday’s vote is about arcane rules for moving wires on utility poles. The bigger issue, which the FCC might not resolve until next year, is about access to telecom companies’ switching stations.

USTelecom, a trade group for the big telcos, has asked the FCC to suspend a part of a 1996 law that requires its members to grant upstarts access to those switching stations. Smaller internet providers view the proposal as an existential threat.

Many smaller internet providers rely on access to rivals’ networks to offer their service. Some simply resell telcos' DSL internet services. But others, such as Mammoth Networks, based in Gillette, Wyoming, have installed additional equipment to offer internet service over other companies’ unused copper or fiber networks. Mammoth, for example, leased copper lines meant for security-alarm systems to build a DSL service in Douglas, Wyoming, before the local telephone company offered DSL, says cofounder Brian Worthen. In that way, these smaller broadband providers are a bit like dial-up internet providers: Telcos provide the underlying cables, but not the internet connection. In other cases, Mammoth helps stitch together disparate fiber networks owned by other organizations. Sometimes that means digging trenches to fiber-optic cables to link towns to nearby internet “backbone” connections, as the company did in Bailey, Colorado.

In their appeal to the FCC to cut off access for upstarts, big telecom companies are employing an unusual provision of the 1996 law. When Congress enacted the measure, lawmakers expected the market to grow more competitive over time. So they included a provision that allows companies to petition the FCC to "forbear" enforcement of some of its rules; USTelecom is now asking for that forbearance.

"It no longer makes sense to single out a few companies and make them share their networks with their competitors," USTelecom President Jonathan Spalter wrote in a blog post in May. "In fact, it’s unfair." USTelecom did not respond to a request for additional comment.

But the FCC's reports find the broadband market lacking in both competition and coverage, especially in rural and tribal areas. According to a report released earlier this year, only about 69 percent of the population in rural areas had access to a home broadband provider offering speeds of 25 Mbps or more in 2016, compared with 98 percent in urban areas. Only 64 percent of tribal populations had access to the same speeds. Another report released this year, also covering 2016, found that nationwide, only about 56 percent of census blocks had more than one broadband provider advertising such speeds.

In its request to the FCC, USTelecom argues that telcos would invest as much as $1.8 billion and create at least 2,200 new jobs if they didn't have to share their networks with competitors.

But Chip Pickering, CEO of the industry group Incompas, which represents many smaller telecom companies, says many communities rely on broadband connections from firms like Mammoth, which built internet services in rural areas where larger telcos were reluctant to invest. If those companies lose access to the telcos' infrastructure, their businesses would be in jeopardy.

"We put a lot of investment into places knowing that we'd have access to that infrastructure," says Worthen, the Mammoth cofounder.