Speakers at NARUC panel on service quality issues in competitive ...
Speakers at NARUC panel on service quality issues in competitive telecom markets said quality of customer transfers between local carriers was key to development of effective local competition. They suggested FCC, state commissions and industry explore idea of neutral…
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3rd-party facilitator for customer transfers between incumbents and CLECs, and especially from one CLEC to another. Consultant and former Rural Utilities Service administrator Chris McLean said problem-free service transfers were vital to competition: “It should be in everyone’s interest to have consistent, neutral standards for smooth customer transfers.” Pam Stegora-Axburg, Qwest eastern region vp, said all carriers involved in customer changeovers had mutual ownership of transfer and should share responsibility for smooth completion. Brian Moir, counsel to big-user group International Communications Assn., said very largest business customers “avoid the CLECs because of today’s flawed cutover processes. Until this problem is solved, the big users will continue to favor incumbents.” Panelists agreed that customers encountered greatest difficulty when they sought to transfer their local service between CLECs or go from CLEC service back to incumbent telco. Martin Cohen, exec. dir. of Ill. Citizens Utility Board, said 3rd party facilitator was “an idea well worth investigating.” He said such entities might be way to minimize current finger- pointing by carriers when customer transfers didn’t go right. Janet Barnard, area vp for Cox Communications, said 3rd party facilitator could work provided it was truly neutral entity, subject to regulatory scrutiny, whose only interest was in smooth completion of transfers in its charge. “The real merit of this concept is that it may provide all of us with a tool to attack and fix the customer transfer problem. Merely writing more regulations or standards isn’t going to fix it.” At earlier NARUC panel, Mark Dahlen, NeuStar dir.-technical development, said systemic problems were occurring in all types of customer transfers between carriers because “the process for exchanging customer information between carriers hasn’t been standardized.” He said neutral 3rd party such as NeuStar could fill role as facilitator, just as U.S. Postal Service was neutral facilitator of mail. Dahlen suggested trial of “carrier-to-carrier service center” limited to small geographic area and just to administration of customers’ carrier freeze orders.