Wireless carriers are eligible for reciprocal compensation if the...

Common Carrier Bureaus in Feb. to confirm they are entitled to compensation because state commissions had questioned it. Common Carrier Chief Dorothy Attwood and Wireless Chief Thomas Sugrue also confirmed that wireless cost recovery isn’t limited to network components deemed “equivalent” to those used in landline networks, although Sprint had said this also was of concern to state PUCs. Attwood and Sugrue said that, as part of FCC’s proposal to move to unified intercarrier compensation regime, Commission looked at so-called symmetric reciprocal compensation between LECs and wireless carriers. It determined: (1) Wireless carriers “are entitled to the opportunity to demonstrate that their termination costs exceed those of the ILECs.” (2) “Equivalent facility” language in Telecom Act “does not require that wireless network components be reviewed on the basis of their relationship to wireline network components.” Determination of whether wireless network components are eligible for compensation should be based on “whether the particular… components are cost sensitive to increasing call traffic,” bureau chiefs said. Bottom line, they said: If wireless carrier “can demonstrate that the costs associated with spectrum, cell sites, backhaul links, base station controllers and mobile switching centers vary, to some degree, with the level of traffic that is carried on the wireless network, a [wireless] carrier can submit a cost study to justify its claim to asymmetric reciprocal compensation.” Sprint also asked bureaus to clarify when wireless carriers are eligible to receive “tandem interconnection rate” that LECs receive for terminating traffic. Bureau chiefs said carrier has to meet “comparable geographic area test,” meaning it has to demonstrate that its switch serves geographic area comparable to ILEC’s tandem switch.