Telecom Companies Want ‘Outdated’ FCC Rules Axed
The FCC should use its biennial review to eliminate rules that “jeopardize the development… of next generation IP-enabled ‘all distance’ services,” Verizon said in comments filed with the agency. The FCC asked for views on rules to be eliminated in a review that the Telecom Act requires every 2 years. The Act requires the agency to see which regulations no longer serve a purpose, particularly in light of competition.
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Verizon urged the FCC to use the review “to clean up the vestiges of monopoly era regulation that… interfere with… the widespread availability of next generation broadband networks.” For example, the FCC should eliminate “the carry- over equal access and nondiscrimination obligations” applying to Bells but not competitors, Verizon said. Among such rules: A requirement that phone companies “read lists of competing long distance providers” to potential customers. Verizon said the rule was designed to prevent the Bells from favoring former owner AT&T after the Bell System break-up. Similarly, “there’s no reasonable argument to be made in today’s market environment that any provider of long distance or [all distance] services can be characterized as dominant,” Verizon said. So they shouldn’t be subject to “dominant” carrier regulations such as tariffing, the company said.
Verizon said the FCC should kill Computer 3 rules including Open Network Architecture (ONA) and comparably efficient interconnection (CEI) requirements that don’t apply to other local or long distance providers and no longer are needed. The FCC did stop applying these rules to wireline broadband Internet access services and to Verizon’s other broadband transmission services, but it ought to drop them altogether for all Bells, the company said.
Many FCC “accounting, reporting and recordkeeping rules” date back to when the FCC more actively set and monitored rates, USTelecom said. Among them: “ONA reporting requirements as well as the requirement that former Bell Operating Companies post [CEI] plans… on company websites.” USTA listed a host of other rules to erase, such as those “governing valuations of services and assets transferred between regulated and non-regulated entities.” Now that there’s competition, “each of these regulations has outlived its purpose and each accordingly imposes costs that outweigh any conceivable benefits,” USTelecom said. Under Sec. 11 of the Telecom Act, the FCC “is duty-bound to repeal or modify” a rule that no longer has a legitimate regulatory purpose, USTelecom said.
BellSouth urged the FCC to “continue to repeal or modify certain burdensome and unnecessary aspects of its Part 51 network change disclosure rules.” The agency “should retain its current carrier notification requirements but eliminate subsequent carrier filings… when a carrier opts to provide public notice through the carrier’s publicly available Internet site,” BellSouth said. Before an ILEC can make a network change it must file a notice with the FCC and wait for the Wireline Bureau to issue a public notice, which typically takes 4-5 weeks, BellSouth said. “This uncertainty and complete lack of control over a critical contingent element of the network change process inhibits efficient network planning,” BellSouth complained.