FCC May Seek Comments Soon on Intercarrier Compensation
The FCC would like to call for comments on the industry proposals for intercarrier compensation (ICC) reform by year-end, although that may be an overly ambitious goal, FCC Wireline Bureau Chief Jeffrey Carlisle said Wed. at an ALTS conference. With so much going on this month -- such as final action on the TRO remand order -- the date may slip into early 2005, Carlisle said. The same goes for the mid-2005 target for voting on the ICC item, he said. “It would be nice if we could complete the process by the middle of next year, but it would be a tremendous undertaking” because the Commission also will working on major proceedings such as IP-enabled services and universal service contribution methodology, he said.
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Carlisle said the call for ICC comments will come as a further notice of proposed rulemaking. He encouraged parties to make substantive comments about the practicality and legal sustainability of the various plans. Not helpful are flat statements such as “this plan is better” or “this plan won’t work,” Carlisle said. He said if there’s “no substance underlying [those comments], it will make our job much harder.” He said the FCC too often gets comments that look like “people’s fantasy land of where they want to live without any reference to legal precedent.” Carlisle said the agency’s job is “to write something that achieves judicial scrutiny and meets policy goals.”
At the wide-ranging conference, ICC kept coming up as the next big thing in telecom policy, once the TRO rules are finished. “Intercarrier compensation is the real critical issue because we won’t see significant progress in any area until we deal with the money issue,” Carlisle said.
Pulver.com Gen. Counsel Jonathan Askin, who is ex- ALTS gen. counsel, said ALTS’ facilities-based carrier members “have to see the light” and realize the current compensation scheme won’t last. Facilities-based CLECs derive much of their revenue from carrier charges, generally access charges or reciprocal compensation, he said. The current regime “is not going to exist in perpetuity,” Askin said. “My sense is we will see a move toward something like a peering model, like bill-&-keep, and companies should start making plans to anticipate those dramatic changes in intercarrier relationships.” He predicted the FCC would use the Intercarrier Compensation Forum (ICF) proposal as a “template” as it considered all industry plans submitted. The ICF plan has the support of a cross-section of industry segments and promotes bill-&- keep as a key part of intercarrier billing. Pure bill-&- keep means handing off traffic without payment, he said: “My advice to CLECs is to use it as a starting point” and recommend changes to make it more suitable for themselves.
Asked if the FCC still favored bill-&-keep, Tamara Preiss, chief of the Wireline Bureau’s Pricing Policy Div., said the agency “still sees a lot of promise in bill-&-keep” but “we take very seriously the concerns that have been raised” by other industry groups. She said the bureau sees bill-&-keep as possibly promoting technology neutrality and allowing reduced regulatory intervention. However, the Commission is expected to issue a “broad” FNPRM that would seek comment “on all of the industry proposals that have come in, not just the ICF proposal,” as well as a few related issues, she said. Asked if the FNPRM would contain tentative conclusions in the FNPRM, she said that was up to the Commission. Preiss emphasized the agency would seek comment on all of the proposals, so in that sense there’s no conclusion.
Along with the ICF plan, plans have been submitted by: (1) The CLEC-supported Cost-Based Intercarrier Compensation Coalition. (2) The Alliance for National Intercarrier Compensation, made up of mid-sized and rural LECs. (3) The Expanded Portland Group of rural LECs. In addition, Western Wireless said it submitted a new plan as an ex parte filing at the FCC Wed., and CTIA offered broad ICC guidelines Tues. (CD Dec 1 p1).