FCC SEEKS ANSWERS FROM AT&T WIRELESS ON LNP PROBLEMS

In a Q&A session at a Practising Law Institute-FCBA telecom conference Wed., Wireless Bureau Chief John Muleta said LNP complaints to the FCC so far had been low “but we will have to wait and see.” In a speech at the conference, he stressed what he expected to be a growing focus in the industry on consumer issues, the importance of intermodal policy areas and a need to look at some of the policy implications behind network coverage gaps.

The letter he sent to AT&T Wireless late Wed. marked the first inquiry about LNP-related problems the Bureau had issued since wireless LNP took effect Nov. 24 in the top 100 markets. “Over the past few days, we have received a number of complaints from consumers and carriers, and have noted recent press accounts indicating that a porting backlog exists for ports from AT&T Wireless to other carriers,” Muleta wrote. He asked for details by Dec. 10 on the nature of the problems and steps taken to address them. “Since the deadline, thousands of consumers have exercised their new freedom to switch among service providers while keeping their phone number,” he wrote. “In the coming days and months, we expect many additional customers to take advantage of the new opportunity to port their number. As more consumers opt to port, it is critical that carriers’ porting systems function properly.”

Since wireless LNP took effect, there have been press accounts of some customers’ having to wait several days for a port to be finalized when switching wireless carriers, compared with the industry standard of 2-1/2 hours. An AT&T spokeswoman said Thurs. that it was telling consumers to expect it to take about 5 days to port their number. “We want to be straightforward with customers about what to expect,” she said. “We are working as hard as we can to address the issues we've encountered and we will continue to work collaboratively with the other carriers to improve the number porting process for consumers.” The spokeswoman said the wireless porting process, in place for 1-1/2 weeks, was new and complex and some initial problems were anticipated. “We fully expected to encounter some bumps in the road as have our competitors,” she said. “Our top priority is to make the porting process more efficient and to work with our competitors to make the process smoother for consumers.”

Meanwhile, in a short order, U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., Judges Raymond Randolph, David Tatel and Merrick Garland turned down a petition by USTA and CenturyTel for a stay of the wireline-to-wireless LNP rules the FCC adopted last month. The court earlier had turned down a USTA request to stay the rules before wireless LNP took effect Nov. 24. “Petitioners have not demonstrated the irreparable injury requisite for the issuance of a stay pending review,” the new order said.

“While we are disappointed that the court will not temporarily delay porting between wireline and wireless carriers to ensure full competition for consumers, we look forward for the court’s review based on the merits of our appeal of the Commission’s discriminatory order,” USTA Pres. Walter McCormick said. USTA had contended that the FCC hadn’t followed the Administrative Procedure Act when adopting the rules, which the group said marked a substantial shift from past agency policy and required adequate public notice. USTA also has raised concerns that the Commission crafted rules that weren’t technologically neutral.

As of Mon., the FCC had received 65 complaints about wireless LNP and about half involved AT&T Wireless, an FCC Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau spokeswoman said. She said that a complaint didn’t necessarily indicate that a carrier had done anything wrong. Muleta said at the PLI conference that overall porting appeared to be going “fairly well.”

Muleta said a number of stay requests had been made to the FCC by rural carriers for additional time to meet LNP requirements. Some states have granted ILECs extensions of the Nov. 24 deadline for wireless-to-wireline local number portability. Muleta said his sense was that the requests for more time were for a temporary “cooling-off” period until certain issues were resolved. As for the requests before the FCC, he said the regulatory process would work through those issues. But he added that as a result of the requests, he hoped there wasn’t “significant consumer confusion. We would hope that a stay would be temporary and that the issues would be dealt with.”

At the PLI conference, Muleta said upcoming trends he saw include the extent to which the “era of the service provider is probably on its way out.” Instead, the trend will be for the industry to be more consumer driven, he said. Muleta said that with radios intelligent enough to pick out bands of spectrum on which to transmit, “does it really matter who owns the spectrum?” He said Vodafone, with more than 150 million customers, had identified its strength as its direct relationship with users rather than in operating support systems (OSS), he said. “The key driver here is the personal relationship with the wireless consumer,” he said. Muleta said that also had implications for intermodal services: “I don’t think consumers ultimately care about the method in which services are delivered. The key is how valuable is the service,” he said.

The growing focus on consumers also places new importance on subscriber concern for adequate infrastructure to ensure network coverage vs. opposition to tower construction. Muleta said he had asked the Spectrum Competition & Policy Div. in the recently reorganized Bureau to examine that issue more closely. He said there needed to be a “growing dialog” about such variant policy areas. Muleta said that now that the Bureau had been focusing on streamlining tower siting approvals, he would like staff to focus more on the policy questions.

“I think the lack of cellphone coverage issue needs greater discussion,” Muleta said. He said the only framework for discussing that shouldn’t be people going around N.Y.C. and finding dead zones. “With all due respect to Senator Schumer’s office, I do think we need to come up with a new way of thinking about that issue,” he said. He told reporters after his speech that while it still was important for people to collect data on the location of coverage holes, he also would like to see a focus on the policy implications of such problems, including community hurdles to allowing a tower siting project to be completed.