ORLANDO -- Due to more pressing issues, neither presidential candidate will focus on telecom policy immediately after the election, surrogates for Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and John McCain, R-Ariz., said in a CompTel debate Tuesday. However, candidates are interested in telecom issues, differing on broadband deployment and network management, among other issues, surrogates said. Larry Irving, Internet Innovation Alliance co-chairman, represented Obama. Lee Dunn, a legislative aide to the McCain presidential campaign, took the Republican side.
ORLANDO -- The telecom industry still is divided on how to revamp intercarrier compensation, indicated speakers at a CompTel panel on the topic. The FCC appears to be teeing up the topic for a Nov. 4 vote. But in a late Monday panel, officials from AT&T, XO Communications the VON Coalition and the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates disagreed not only on overhaul proposals, but on whether the current system even needs fixing.
ORLANDO -- Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss., urged competitive telecom companies to form a Washington alliance to fight large phone company lobbying. In a CompTel keynote, he said the alliance should include Comcast, Sprint Nextel, Clearwire, Google and competitive local exchange carriers. A coalition of that scale could be effective in combating AT&T, Verizon and other large companies’ significant Hill presence, he said. Strategy aside, Pickering predicted sunny days for competitors. Election day and the financial crisis create new opportunities for CLECs to push policy goals, he said.
A disputed $0.0007 uniform terminating access rate may work as an interim solution, but it isn’t the best permanent tack on intercarrier compensation, the VON Coalition said. In August the VoIP group endorsed the so-called triple-oh- seven rate but Thursday it asked the FCC to adopt a bill-and- keep system. “The commission can and should adopt a bill- and-keep approach,” but if the FCC “decides it needs an interim transition plan, a uniform terminating rate of no higher than $0.0007” a minute “is the most equitable approach,” coalition executive director Jim Kohlenberger said. Before endorsing a uniform terminating rate, the coalition supported bill and keep in 2005. The Wireline Bureau is said to be considering three approaches to revamping compensation: A uniform rate, bill and keep and reciprocal compensation (CD Sept 15 p2). Verizon’s proposed $0.0007 uniform rate is similar to bill and keep in that it would allow terminating carriers to pass along unrecovered costs to customers through increased subscriber line charges. Under a true bill-and-keep system, though, terminating carriers would charge originating carriers nothing and pass all terminating costs to customers. VON’s approach differs from that only in that it also would allow carriers, in “limited circumstances,” to recover costs from an “explicit subsidy,” the coalition said in the ex parte.
Rural carriers don’t necessarily think a proposed $0.0007 uniform terminating access rate is gaining traction at the FCC, Dan Mitchell, legal vice president for the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, said in an interview. That’s so even though the rural carrier trade association has asked Congress to quash that proposal (CD Oct 2 p7), he told us. Watching Bells “actively engage” the FCC in support of the “triple-oh-seven” plan pushed rural carriers to act, he said. NTCA wants to make sure the agency has the “complete story,” Mitchell said. Wednesday, NTCA CEO Michael Brunner urged Congress to intervene, saying the FCC was “seriously considering” a proposal by Verizon, AT&T and others to set a $0.0007 uniform terminating access rate for all traffic. NTCA has condemned that plan as legally unsound and hurtful to rural carriers.
Chairman Kevin Martin’s trip to Denmark this week may have held up an FCC order on submarine cable regulatory fees, said an industry official close to the proceeding. Martin was in Copenhagen at a Danish government-sponsored conference on open networks regulation and wireless innovation. The submarine cable item hasn’t circulated among commissioners, despite the FCC promising to release a final order this week, an agency official confirmed Thursday. Now the order isn’t expected until next week, the industry source said. Two months ago, in an order on regulatory fees, the commission gave itself 60 days to address submarine cable systems. The issue hasn’t been controversial since submarine cable operators found consensus with Verizon and AT&T last month (CD Sept 29 p11).
Adoption of Verizon’s plan to revamp intercarrier compensation would “almost certainly” trigger litigation at the state and federal level, CompTel and NCTA said. In a late Monday letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, the competitive local exchange carrier and cable associations said Verizon’s Sept. 12 plan (CD Sept 15 p2) could decimate competitors’ interconnection rights. “Facilities-based competitors are beginning to have an impact in this marketplace,” but only as a result of the current interconnection regime, CompTel and NCTA said. Adopting Verizon’s proposal “would erode substantially the statutory and contractual rights and obligation[s] upon which facilities-based competition depends.” But though CompTel and NCTA rejected Verizon’s interconnection ideas, they supported unifying terminating access rates for all traffic. They didn’t opine on Verizon’s proposal to set a uniform $0.0007 rate. “At this time, we're not taking a position on specific rate levels,” a CompTel spokeswoman said. The competitors’ support for unifying rates “is good news and demonstrates the broad public interest appeal of that approach,” a Verizon spokesman said. “Verizon plans to reach out to the parties to find workable solutions to the interconnection issues raised.” CompTel and NCTA said the Verizon plan would give incumbent local exchange carriers “control over key decisions affecting CLEC networks,” and permit incumbent local exchange carriers to avoid “obligations under existing agreements” and “state arbitration of future disputes.” The plan is too vague, they said. Verizon proposes default compensation and interconnection rules, but doesn’t explain how the rules would be implemented between two interconnecting carriers, nor how carriers may obtain different arrangements, the groups said. Verizon’s proposal to require terminating carriers to “establish at least one [point of interconnection] per LATA” clashes with the 1996 Telecom Act, CompTel and NCTA said. The Act required ILECs to interconnect with requesting carriers at “any technically feasible point,” they said. The Verizon rule would permit ILECs to dictate where competitors should interconnect, and their choice of network technology, CompTel and NCTA said. For example, if an ILEC designated only circuit-switched facilities as interconnection points, competitors would be forced to convert IP traffic to a circuit-switched format, they said. Also, because the Verizon rule doesn’t distinguish between CLECs and ILECs, CLECs too would have to designate interconnection points, the competitors said. That’s wrong, because Congress only imposed interconnection requirements on incumbents, they said.
Wireline and wireless providers should pay FCC regulatory fees under one umbrella, said the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance. In comments on an FCC rulemaking, ITTA and others urged it to recalibrate fees so they better reflect technology convergence and agency organizational changes.
Attendance is waning at wireline trade shows. Numbers at Supercomm and CompTel are in decline, while VON -- the big VoIP show -- is dead. The large trade show format may have become unsustainable, said several industry officials involved with show spending. Conference organizers say they're upbeat.
Qwest will follow the same approach as AT&T and Verizon in giving the FCC usable accounting data upon agency request once an order granting the Bell forbearance on cost- assignment rules takes effect, Qwest said. The carrier filed its compliance plan Wednesday. AT&T and Verizon, granted the same relief, also submitted plans (CD Sept 24 p7). The Wireline Bureau hasn’t acted on them. Sprint Nextel, a critic of the AT&T and Verizon plans, went after the new one, too. “The Qwest submission is more of the same and … should be rejected outright,” a spokesman for the wireless carrier said Thursday. “Under this plan, Qwest would have the sole discretion to update the cost accounting ratios,” opening the door for data manipulation, he said. “Given … the history of anti-competitive behavior from Qwest as well as AT&T and Verizon, it stretches the imagination to conceive of any scenario where approving this plan would be good for competition and benefit consumers.”