The FCC granted part of a petition by Core Communications Fri. tha...
The FCC granted part of a petition by Core Communications Fri. that asked the agency to forbear from enforcing several ISP-bound reciprocal compensation rules approved in 2001. The agency granted forbearance from growth caps and the so-called new market…
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rule, saying those rules were no longer in the public interest. The new market rule barred carriers from getting reciprocal compensation for new markets they entered after April 18, 2001. The growth cap was a limit on the amount of growth eligible for reciprocal compensation. The Commission chose to let 2 other rules remain -- rate caps and the mirroring rule, saying they were needed to prevent regulatory arbitrage and promote efficient investment in telecom services and facilities. With mirroring, a Bell company that wanted to pay a low reciprocal compensation rate for ISP traffic it originated needed to accept the same rate for traffic it terminated. Fri. was the deadline for the FCC to act on the petition. The Commission had planned to act on the broader reciprocal compensation remand order at the same time it acted on the Core request (CD Oct 1 p3) but reportedly couldn’t agree about the complex issue in time. ALTS Gen. Counsel Jason Oxman said eliminating the growth caps and new market rules was a good thing because the rules had “artificially limited the ability of competitive carriers to recover the costs imposed on them by other carriers that delivered traffic to the CLECs’ networks.” He said the FCC’s action helps ensure facilities-based carriers would get some compensation “albeit at an artificially low federally established rate.” Said SBC: “Instead of piecemeal decisions and subjecting itself and the industry to constant litigation, the FCC should adopt broad-based intercarrier compensation reform that would make decisions like today unnecessary.”