FCC TO HOLD TO NOV. 24 LNP DEADLINE AND RULE SOON ON GUIDANCE

The full Commission will provide guidance on both wireless-to-wireless and wireline-to-wireless processes for allowing customers to take a number with them when switching providers, Muleta said in a quarterly bureau news conference. Pending before the full FCC has been a request by 5 wireless carriers that the Commission re-examine a July 3 letter from Muleta on certain LNP implementation issues. Those included a determination that carriers couldn’t refuse to shift a customer’s number if that person owed an early termination fee or otherwise had an outstanding balance. Implementation issues raised by the industry for the FCC to clarify have included porting intervals, whether carriers need interconnection agreements for LNP and how E911 services would be handled during porting transition periods. While Muleta’s July letter answered questions on areas such as the E911 impact, he said he would offer clarification on other issues, including intermodal porting impacts, well in advance of the Nov. 24 LNP deadline.

Muleta said Tues. that all remaining guidance issues would go before the full Commission, which include both intermodal and intramodal porting issues. He said he had provided draft recommendations to the Commission on areas not covered in his earlier letter to carriers. He said the guidance would be “even more regulatory clarification. I tried to provide it once, they didn’t like it. So hopefully the Commission will enlighten the carriers one more time.” The FCC remains on track for the Nov. 24 deadline in the top 100 Metropolitan Statistical Areas, he said. “The date is firm.”

Separately, the FCC filed at the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., late Tues. in opposition to a petition for mandamus filed by 3 wireless carriers seeking relief from the Nov. 24 deadline. The D.C. Circuit earlier this month ordered the Commission to respond to the petition by Alltel, AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless. The carriers argued that federal law exempted mobile operators from having to provide LNP and that Congress had imposed porting obligations only on LECs. The operators told the court that a stay of the deadline was warranted because the FCC lacked the authority to require wireless LNP.

The FCC told the court that the 3 carriers had filed a petition at the Commission to rescind the LNP rule just 3 months ago. Mandamus isn’t an avenue of relief “because the FCC is under no duty to act on the petition to rescind within any particular timetable or in order to enable the petitioners to file a petition for judicial review before the rule is implemented,” the agency said. “By seeking relief in the form of a stay rather than an order compelling the agency to act, petitioners have obscured the fact that their grievance against the FCC is that the agency has not acted as soon as they would like on the petition to rescind.” Even if the wireless carriers were entitled to mandamus relief, the Commission said, they hadn’t met the standard for obtaining a stay “because all the factors weigh in the Commission’s favor… It is undisputed that wireless number portability will promote competition by making it easier for customers to change carriers.” The FCC has authority to implement such a procompetition measures, even if it wasn’t under the part of the Communications Act that covered porting for wireline carriers. “Petitioners’ claimed injury -- the costs associated with implementing portability -- is not irreparable because those costs are recoverable through charges passed on to consumers,” the FCC said.

Meanwhile as for intermodal porting issues, the FCC’s goal is to also provide guidance before Nov. 24, although Muleta declined to provide a more specific time frame. “The bottom line there is that we have industries that have grown up under different regulatory structures and those things need to be aligned,” he said. Large wireless carriers have argued that only service level agreements are needed to put in place porting agreements between carriers, while many LECs and rural carriers have contended that interconnection pacts are needed.

Issues hindering bilateral agreements between carriers are among the questions Muleta asked in a letter to the 4 largest carriers earlier this month, seeking updates on LNP implementation efforts in certain markets. The letters asked “what have you done operationally to ensure that there’s a smooth process for the consumer,” Muleta said. “A lot of people are talking about spending billions and billions of dollars. What is that money going into? Are you creating call centers for LNP or are you creating [customer] retention centers?” In some cases, Muleta said carriers were focusing on both customer retention programs for when LNP hit as well as implementation efforts. Others are focusing resources on building infrastructure to make sure that porting of numbers goes off as planned, he said.

On Enhanced 911 deployment, Muleta said the FCC remained focused on a timeline to 100% compliance: “The idea is to have the same level of service across all sets of communities.” The agency is aiming for 100% compliance “over time in all geographies so that everybody in the United States gets the same grade service.” Overriding issues such as location accuracy remain to be addressed, he said, and the FCC has a 2nd E911 Coordination Initiative meeting set for Oct. 29-30. Muleta said rural carriers had requests pending at the FCC for waivers of certain E911 requirements. The Rural Telecom Group, for example, has asked for a limited stay of the E911 Phase 2 deadline for the smallest wireless carriers, saying most rural operators couldn’t meet accuracy requirements using a network-based solution for Phase 2. Muleta reiterated testimony he gave at a recent House hearing that the FCC’s intent was to work closely with carriers, public safety answering points and the communities they served “to understand the problems that exist for deploying Phase 2 of E911, what the path to 100% compliance looks like and whether that’s acceptable to the community interests that are involved.”