BELLSOUTH ASKS FCC TO LET ILECS RECOVER WIRELESS LNP COSTS

In its petition, BellSouth argued that wireline carriers should have a “reasonable opportunity to recover the costs to implement wireless local number portability” under Sec. 251 of the Telecom Act, which covers LNP requirements. It asked for a waiver to modify its current end-user LNP charge by extending the recovery period beyond a 5-year cap or modifying its current rate. BS also said last week it was examining the possibility of filing a court challenge to the FCC’s wireline-to-wireless LNP order, which confirmed that wireline carriers must port numbers to wireless carriers whose coverage area overlapped the rate center in which the wireline number was assigned, as long as the mobile operator kept the original rate center designation. A company spokesman said Mon. no decision had been made on whether BellSouth would appeal that order.

In Feb. 1999, the FCC let ILECs recover the costs of providing number portability through a federally tariffed monthly charge on end-users, which had a maximum period of 5 years. BellSouth said that while cost recovery for ILECs was regulated by the FCC, other telecom carriers could recover long-term LNP costs in any “lawful” manner. The company asked the Commission to extend the maximum 5-year recovery period or to modify the current end-user LNP charge. BS began charging end-users for wireline LNP in May 1999 at a rate of 35 cents monthly that’s due to expire in May 2004. “Although BellSouth was aware that it would incur costs to deploy WLNP [wireless LNP], those costs were unknown at the time and therefore omitted,” it said. As a result, BS said its current charge reflected only the cost of wireline LNP.

Among the options for relief BellSouth proposed to the Commission were a new LNP rate, which would take effect in Jan., of 66 cents per month, an increase of 31 cents. Under that scenario, the LNP charge would expire on schedule in May 2004. The carrier said another option was to impose a one- time charge of $1.21 on subscribers. Wireless LNP “costs were not reasonably ascertainable when the current LNP charge was reviewed and approved by the Commission,” it said. BS said Sec. 251 and FCC rules ensured that the costs of number portability wouldn’t affect the ability of carriers to compete. It noted several wireless carriers had started, or planned, to charge subscribers for LNP cost recovery. It said that if it weren’t allowed to follow suit it would be at “a significant competitive disadvantage.”

Separately, 4 rural carriers asked the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., late Fri. to stay parts of the FCC’s recent wireless-to-wireless LNP order that required wireless carriers to port numbers across rate center boundaries and in the absence of local interconnection agreements. Central Texas Telephone Co-op, Kaplan Telephone, Leaco Rural Telephone Co-op and Valley Telephone Co-op filed an emergency motion for partial stay of the parts of the order that required a wireless carrier to port numbers to another wireless carrier that hadn’t established a local presence, local interconnection pact or numbering resources in the rate center in which the ported number was provided. The carriers already had filed an emergency motion at the FCC to stay the order, pending resolution in the D.C. Circuit. In the wireless-to-wireless LNP order, the Commission concluded that such porting didn’t require a carrier that received the number to be directly interconnected with the wireless carrier that gave up the number or to have numbering resources in the rate center.

“The order requires wireless carriers to provide location portability by requiring the transfer of a number from a switch in one geographic location to a switch in a distant geographic location with no limitation on separating distance,” the carriers said: “In so doing, the FCC has failed to engage in reasoned decision-making.” The 4 carriers argued that for a rural LEC to complete a call to a number ported to a carrier whose switch and interconnection facilities were beyond the rural LEC’s authorized service area, rural LECs would have to route the call over toll trunks. “The FCC, however, has provided rural LECs with no satisfactory method for accomplishing this routing,” the petition said. The result of dropped or interrupted calls, or surprise toll bills, will be customer confusion and frustration, “followed by anger directed at the carrier handling what the customer perceives as a ‘local’ call,” the carriers said.

Sprint urged the FCC to reject the rural LECs’ (RLECs) request for a stay, saying any harm the rural carriers alleged would stem from the order would be “self-inflicted,” including charges that dropped calls to wireless customers would hurt their reputation or result in surprise toll charges to customers. As laid out in the recent wireline-to- wireless LNP order, “the port of a number does not change the way a LEC rates its customers’ calls. If a call to a number is local today, the call necessarily will remain local even if the number is ported to another carrier. There will be no customer confusion -- unless the RLECs choose to discriminate against customers with ported numbers.” Sprint said in most cases, rural LECs would route land-to-mobile calls to wireless customers with ported numbers the same way they routed land-to-mobile calls to wireless customers without ported numbers. That means they would route those calls over the existing trunk group linking their network to the LATA tandem switch, which would forward the call to the mobile switching center, Sprint said.

Meanwhile, AT&T Wireless said Mon. it had signed an agreement with Verizon Wireless covering the operational details of how they would port customers’ wireless numbers starting Nov. 24. AT&T Wireless opened an LNP Web site at www.attwireless.com/lnp and said it had engaged in extensive intercarrier testing on LNP systems.

Separately, AT&T told the FCC last week that when a customer ported a wireline number to a wireless carrier, “AT&T will end up having a billing issue with that customer. That happens because there are no procedures currently in place which would require a wireless carrier to notify the interexchange carrier that the customer has selected another carrier to provide long distance service.” AT&T said that was because wireless carriers didn’t have equal-access obligations. “The long distance provider will almost always become the wireless provider itself , thereby replacing the interexchange carrier,” AT&T said. It said that when a customer had chosen a different wireline local carrier, it usually received a notice from the former wireline carrier. Unless it receives notice from the new LEC that the customer has kept AT&T has its IXC, AT&T said it designated the customer for disconnection in 30 days. “Because this will rarely if ever be the case for customers porting to a wireless carrier, all of those customers will be billed for 30 days unless the customer advises AT&T that he/she is discontinuing their AT&T service.”

NARUC sent a letter to the Senate this week urging senators to reject any last-minute efforts to push back the LNP deadline. NARUC said the likely vehicle for such an amendment would be the Omnibus Appropriations Bill, which would include the Commerce Justice State appropriations bill. NARUC said that wireline phone companies are likely to argue that the FCC’s recent order would effectively mandate geographic location portability. NARUC said the FCC’s first LNP order and more recent LNP orders clarify that porting isn’t based on location.