Verizon filed application with FCC Thurs. to provide long distanc...

exceeded all the federal requirements for FCC approval,” he said. N.J. is 6th state where Verizon has applied to offer long distance, with application for R.I. still pending at Commission. Timeline at FCC is that agency has 90 days to review Verizon’s application. N.J. Board of Public Utilities (BPU) and U.S. Justice Dept. will provide recommendations to FCC before it renders final decision. Dennis Bone, Verizon Jersey pres., said KPMG Consulting conducted testing on Verizon systems in N.J. for 19 months. “This is the first time in any state that this testing has shown a 100% perfect score,” he told reporters in Thurs. conference call. “The record at the New Jersey board relating to the 14-point checklist is very clean,” Tauke told reporters, stressing that process application had undergone at state level was “very routine.” He faced several questions from reporters about Verizon’s submitting Sec. 271 filing for N.J. at FCC before N.J. BPU had formally voted to approve it. Tauke said process was different in different state PUCs and for Sec. 271 applications such as N.Y., Verizon submitted application at FCC without formal vote from state commission. In states such as N.J., Verizon didn’t make filing at FCC until “we believed that [state] commissioners were sufficiently comfortable with the record to reach a positive conclusion,” Tauke said. “There’s no science to this. We obviously believe that we have reached this sense in the state of N.J.” Verizon officials said that N.J. accounted for nearly 15.5% of lines for former Bell Atlantic region. So far, nearly 54.5% of former Bell Atlantic lines have made it through long distance entry process and N.J. would boost figure above 70%, Tauke said.