AT&T and Windstream Pricing Flexibility Petitions ‘Deemed Granted’
The FCC didn’t act Monday on the pricing flexibility petitions of AT&T and Windstream, which means the petitions are “deemed granted” according to existing rules, said a commission spokesman. The telcos had filed petitions to show they met the collocation triggers necessary to get out of special access rate regulation in the San Francisco/Oakland and San Antonio metropolitan statistical areas for AT&T, and the Lincoln, Neb.; Tulsa, Okla.; and Houston MSAs for Windstream.
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Even as the price flexibility petitions were granted, a senior FCC official in Chairman Julius Genachowski’s office reiterated that the special access rules were in need of reform. “Based on productive discussions among the Commissioners over the past three weeks, the petitions from AT&T and Windstream, which were filed under existing rules, will be allowed to be granted according to those rules,” the official told us by email. “But those rules are not working as intended, and pursuant to ongoing discussions we expect the Commission will soon vote on an order setting out a path to reform them."
A draft order on special access that’s been circulating on the eighth floor for more than two weeks would have frozen the AT&T and Windstream petitions as the commission contemplated an upcoming data collection (CD June 21 p1). It wasn’t immediately clear Monday what would become of the draft order now that the petitions are deemed granted. An FCC official said the commission would that “soon issue a mandatory, comprehensive data request, to collect the necessary data from incumbent and competition providers."
"I'm disappointed,” said Colleen Boothby, who represents the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee, a group of high-volume corporate customers of special access and other telecom services. “The effect of this is the prices go up immediately in those cities.” Boothby said she’s looking forward to the commission fixing the current pricing flexibility rules, which would mean “competitive triggers that actually measure competition so we can get pricing flexibility in competitive areas and withhold it in noncompetitive areas until they develop competition.” AT&T and Windstream did not comment by our deadline.