WIRELINE BUREAU CHIEF FOCUSES ON INTERCARRIER COMPENSATION
Wireline Bureau Chief William Maher told an FCBA lunch Fri. his bureau was interested in intercarrier compensation changes that were more cost-based and “less open to arbitrage.” Fraud allegations against MCI on least cost routing have focused attention on the complexity of the intercarrier compensation regime and the importance that investments not be based on “unintended disparities among compensation regimes,” he told the FCBA Wireless Committee. He also echoed plans outlined by Chmn. Powell last week for a voice-over-IP (VoIP) proceeding and said he was interested in “competitive neutrality” when it came to local number portability among wireline and wireless carriers.
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Maher acknowledged the intercarrier compensation proceeding had been “hanging fire for a while.” He said he was interested in “revving up” work in a rulemaking begun in 2001. Powell at a media briefing earlier last week also stressed the high priority of pricing and intercarrier compensation issues. Maher said he would like the Bureau to have a “double-barreled approach” of: (1) Addressing individual petitions already before the FCC. Among those is a petition by T-Mobile USA, Western Wireless and Nextel asking the Commission to that “reaffirm” wireless termination tariffs aren’t the proper tool for creating reciprocal compensation arrangements for transport and termination of traffic. Wireless carriers usually interconnect indirectly with a rural ILEC by exchanging traffic via an intermediate carrier. The carriers said companies handling such indirect interconnections often handed off traffic under bill & keep arrangements, not interconnection pacts, for mobile-to-land traffic.
(2) Reviving the broader rulemaking on intercarrier compensation. Maher said the Bureau was looking “very carefully” at the record gathered so far on bill & keep. In the original NPRM, the Commission had asked carriers for views on unifying disparate carrier compensation programs, suggesting the use of bill & keep, which basically meant carriers didn’t pay each other but instead recovered costs from end-user customers. CTIA has backed bill & keep for wireless interconnection. “One thing that I am very concerned about is avoiding too much of a piecemeal approach because of the recent arbitrage [allegations] and the recent highlighting of what could be done,” Maher said. “The thing to do is to address the policy issues in a unified manner.”
On wireless local number portability (LNP), for which mobile operators face a Nov. 24 deadline, he reiterated what other top FCC officials have said recently -- that the Commission first would issue a decision on wireless-to- wireless implementation guidance, then address wireless-to- wireline questions. The Commission is expected to release a decision on wireless-to-wireless implementation issues early this week.
“I am very interested in the principle of competitive neutrality,” Maher said. In recent meetings with wireline carriers on LNP, he said they had stressed to him how important competitive neutrality in that area was. “Consumers if they want to be able to cut the cord from wireline to wireless, they should be able to,” he said. “Conversely, I don’t want any regulation that would tilt a consumer’s choice in what carrier they could choose. We at the FCC work to protect competition, not any particular set of competitors.”
On VoIP, Maher said the Bureau was viewing it as a technology that would use both wireless and wireline platforms, although the thornier regulatory questions might be on the traditional wireline side. To analyze the technical and policy issues, “we would be looking at in a technology- and platform- neutral manner that could well include a consideration of the wireless applications as well,” Maher said.