CenturyLink Forbearance Petition Faces Opposition
CenturyLink failed to meet the burden of proof in its petition for forbearance from certain dominant carrier regulations and the Computer Inquiry tariffing requirement, said comments filed Friday by tw telecom, Sprint Nextel, the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates and the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel. Corning supported the forbearance, arguing it has “witnessed first-hand the impact of the Commission’s orders granting to other carriers the identical regulatory relief requested by CenturyLink."
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CenturyLink requested forbearance from dominant rules with respect to its packet-switched and optical transmission services, arguing that because of recent mergers, its enterprise broadband services were subject to different regulations depending on which affiliate -- Qwest, Embarq, or CenturyTel -- previously provided those services (CD March 8 p11). “The requested forbearance will remove this artificial, and plainly unnecessary, roadblock to broadband deployment and competition,” it said.
In joint comments, NASUCA and the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel characterized the petition as “yet another ‘me too’ Forbearance Petition” that was “riding on the coattails of previous forbearances” granted to other carriers who have all “gamed the regulatory process to secure a competitive advantage in terms of reduced regulation and claimed cost savings” that have not trickled down to consumers (http://xrl.us/bm4uwb). Granting CenturyLink’s petition would “further exacerbate a telecommunications service market which continues to be insufficiently competitive to discipline the behavior and performance of the largest market participants,” they said.
Evaluating CenturyLink’s petition using the traditional market power framework employed in the Phoenix forbearance order, the FCC should find that CenturyLink has not shown there is “sufficient actual and potential competition from facilities-based service providers in the retail and wholesale markets for non-TDM-based special access services in the legacy CenturyTel or legacy Embarq territories to prevent it from raising prices, discriminating unreasonably, or harming consumers,” tw telecom said (http://xrl.us/bm4uxp). The Phoenix order set up a framework to determine whether sufficient competition exists in a market to refrain from applying dominant carrier regulations.
Sprint agreed, saying CenturyLink failed to show it is no longer dominant in the provision of all the non-TDM services for which it seeks relief (http://xrl.us/bm4uvp). “Indeed, CenturyLink has not even provided the Commission with the information it would need to determine whether CenturyLink remains dominant in the provision of these services,” Sprint said, arguing the petition “largely ignores the relevant analytical framework."
Corning, however, argued that the requested elimination of the rules on other carriers’ enterprise broadband services “has contributed to increased fiber deployment throughout the United States and promoted competition in enterprise broadband services nationwide” (http://xrl.us/bm4uxi). Corning argued that the requested relief is “consistent with Commission precedent” and would further the goals of Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 by facilitating broadband deployment and competition. Corning is one of the nation’s leading providers of optical fiber used in broadband deployment.