Closed NANC Meeting Heightens Neustar Concerns Over LNPA Selection Process

The request to keep the Wednesday NANC meeting at the FCC confidential was approved by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and acting General Counsel Jonathan Sallet, said the public notice announcing it. NANC meetings are usually open, an agency official told us, but this is the first time there’s been a competitive contract for the portability administrator. “The NANC would benefit from all affected parties having the ability to participate in a conversation with the Council that precedes, rather than follows, the scheduled closed meeting,” Neustar wrote.

"Not having an opportunity to participate in a real conversation with the NANC; having had no response to Neustar’s consistent efforts since mid-October to enable all vendors to submit new proposals; and with our Petition alerting the FCC to flaws in the RFP [request for proposal] and the selection process having to date received no response, we are taking the opportunity in this letter to renew our call for certain essential considerations to be made by the NANC,” Hook wrote. Those considerations include that the North American Portability Management LLC (NAPM), which writes the initial recommendation in the vendor selection, “is a private company made up of only ten of the very largest telecommunications carriers, with no responsibilities to the needs of any entity other than themselves,” Hook said.

Neustar isn’t the only group that’s taken issue with a perceived lack of transparency in the process. “We are concerned to the point of paranoia that the NAPM/NANC is not communicating with the rest of the industry,” said Texaltel Executive Director Charles Land by email. “So much of what they are doing is cloaked in secrecy,” he told us. “We don’t know if they are considering changes in how number portability works (which is really scary), changes in pricing structure that could tremendously disadvantage smaller companies, changes in vendors that could be disruptive of porting or even disruptive of completing calls to ported numbers. Some of the rumors of ideas that they are considering are frightening.” The changes could put smaller telcos and the country’s economy at “great risk,” he said. “We don’t know what the bids that they have presently are, so we don’t know the impact on smaller carriers. We don’t know what the bid specifications were for the first round, nor do we know if those might change in another round. All other things being equal, usually rebidding means lower prices, so I would say the concept of rebidding doesn’t scare us, but the devil is bound to be in the details, which we don’t have access to."

"Effective, competitively-neutral LNP is crucial to CLECs,” HyperCube Vice President-Regulatory and Government Affairs Robert McCausland told us by email. “Like other CLECs, HyperCube seeks transparency and a voice in the process. Clearly, the process has not been sufficiently open and transparent to date.” A Neustar spokesman cited the Michigan Internet & Telecommunications Alliance, Midwest Association of Competitive Communications, Comptel, Cbeyond and TDS Metrocom as groups that have also expressed concern about the selection process, based on filings in FCC docket 09-109. Those companies did not comment.

"The NANC’s approval of any recommendation by the NAPM puts your stamp on the decision,” Hook said. “If you believe their recommendation does not reflect the interests of your broader constituency, you have the means, and responsibility, to fix it.” Without neutrality when transitioning to a new LNPA system, “competition will be harmed,” Hook said. Neustar has been advocating a new round of offers, as the request for proposal “implicitly contemplates more than one round of competitive offers” and “Neustar reasonably understood it would be permitted to submit additional proposals,” she said.

Telcordia wrote NANC chairwoman Kane Thursday, responding to what it called Neustar’s “remarkable” letter. “Neustar is fundamentally wrong” to suggest the selection process was not designed to safeguard the interests of entities that aren’t members of the NPAM, said Telcordia. “That was the fundamental reason behind creation of the SWG,” it said, referring to NANC’s Selection Working Group, which offered membership to “all NANC members -- including representatives of smaller carriers,” Telcordia said in the letter provided to us by its Wiltshire Grannis counsel, John Nakahata.

"There is no reason to believe, as Neustar suggests, that the [Number Portability Administration Center] will degrade in the absence of a revised RFP and new rounds of bidding,” Telcordia said. FCC rules “require all simple ports to be completed within one business day,” with wireless industry standards that are “even faster,” Telcordia said. “A change in the LNPA will not change porting intervals already in place and expected by U.S. consumers.” Neustar’s “last-ditch suggestion that NANC should now develop new benchmarks is nothing more than a recipe for more delay and a way to preserve its revenue stream well beyond the end of the current contract,” Telcordia said. “Defining benchmarks would repeat the notice and comment process that already occurred on the RFP, without necessarily improving the result of the selection process. This cannot and should not be done simply by inviting yet another round of bids with ’sharpened pencils,’ as Neustar suggests."

"Ericsson certainly seems eager to shut down this process, without further discussion or thought about what is in the interests of their potential customers,” a Neustar spokesman said in response to Telcordia’s letter.