Neutrality Critical to Local Number Portability Administration, Commenters Say

"The Commission’s prompt approval and issuance of the procurement documents -- without alteration -- will advance on-going efforts to meet the requisite timelines under the current LNPA contracts,” said a letter signed by AT&T, CTIA, CenturyLink, Level3, OPASTCO, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, Verizon, USTelecom and XO (http://xrl.us/bnpr32). The group said the documents were developed by groups comprised of industry representatives with extensive expertise in number administration and portability. The documents will ensure that number portability systems “continue to operate in a manner that is trusted, neutral and reliable."

"It’s absolutely critical that the administrator of this service is completely neutral,” Neustar Vice President-Carrier Services Steve Edwards told us. The LNP database also has to work “all the time, every time,” he said. Innovation is also crucial, he said. “It’s really important that the administrator has the experience and the ability to innovate."

Neustar has been the LNP administrator since portability started in 1997, but its current contract is scheduled to end in 2015. In its comments, Neustar said it had provided “innovative services” and “played a significant role in enabling competition in the telecommunications marketplace as the industry has evolved” (http://xrl.us/bnpsh6). The selection process established by the FCC is “generally well designed” to ensure a competitive bidding process, the “critical regulatory requirement of neutrality,” and an administrator that “has the technical and managerial excellence to continue to provide the level of service and innovation that the industry has come to expect,” it said.

Neustar said it was in a good position to understand the importance of neutrality because it has “significant experience with neutrality,” and in fact the “Neu” in its name “stands for ‘neutral.'” With its comments, the company attached a white paper by former FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth, who discussed the importance of neutrality in LNP administration (http://xrl.us/bnpsjy). “Neutrality is as important today as ever. Millions of Americans rely on number portability each year. They assume it works. Telecommunications providers rely on number portability. They also assume that it works and that it is competitively neutral, not favoring one carrier or one manufacturer or one operating system over another. A failure of neutrality of the LNPA would undermine the integrity of the competitive telecommunications marketplace that the Congress and the FCC sought to establish in the 1990s. Of necessity, the LNPA is privy to competitively sensitive information that could be exploited if the LNPA was not unquestionably neutral.” Neustar gave Furchtgott-Roth a “generous grant” to underwrite part of his research into LNP neutrality, he said.

Public Knowledge urged the commission to “ensure that the administrator continue to be required to meet strong neutrality requirements and deliver the reliable, seamless LNP services that consumers have come to expect when they decide to switch telecommunications carriers” (http://xrl.us/bnpr4n). President Gigi Sohn called the neutrality of the administrator “essential” because “were an administrator to be aligned with a segment of the telephone industry or with a particular telecommunications service provider, it would have every incentive to favor one company or sector over another."

But Comcast wants the RFP to be revised to permit a peered architecture for number porting services in the future, thereby letting multiple local number porting administrators compete to furnish porting services to voice providers in each region (http://xrl.us/bnpr9b). Neustar has been the sole provider of such services under all of several regional master agreements, and the current draft of the RFP “would perpetuate this non-competitive approach to the provision of LNP services, because it would authorize the selection of only a single LNPA in each region,” Comcast wrote. “The FCC repeatedly has recognized that a competitive marketplace encourages innovation, leads to improved service quality, and fosters responsiveness to customer needs. A competitive marketplace for number portability administration should produce similar benefits.”

Telcordia Technologies warned that the neutrality provisions of the RFP and vendor qualification survey “erect unnecessary barriers to competing bidders that do not ensure neutrality": they both reference an “undue influence” standard but provide no guidance on how it will be applied; they contradict each other on whether a subcontractor must meet any or all neutrality requirements; and they appear to foist neutrality determinations on the FoNPAC rather than the FCC, said the R&D company owned by Ericsson. “The RFP’s process for addressing ‘neutrality’ needs to be revised,” Telcordia wrote. Telcordia urged the commission to “streamline and focus the neutrality evaluation by providing a more tailored process for identifying and addressing any neutrality concerns, by placing neutrality determinations on a parallel track with the other parts of the award process, and by replacing the requirement for bidders to abide by the Neustar Code of Conduct, which was developed as a result of concerns arising from Neustar’s unique corporate history” (http://xrl.us/bnpr5w).

Telcordia’s requests “would represent an unprecedented and unjustifiable departure from the FCC’s rules and the well-established bidding and neutrality provisions that have been consistently used in procurements over which the agency has jurisdiction,” said North American Portability Management. NAPM was responding to proposals in a Telcordia ex parte filing last month. Telcordia “incorrectly suggests that the neutrality procedures and requirements ... lack sufficient clarity and that the neutrality requirement should not apply to subcontractors,” NAPM wrote. But Telcordia misreads the RFP, NAPM said. NAPM urged the commission to adopt the documents without modification as soon as possible. The documents “reflect several months of careful thought and hard work,” and demonstrate “consensus support” that “speaks volumes about the thoroughness and quality of the work, which serves the interests of consumers, the industry as a whole, and the Federal Communications Commission” (http://xrl.us/bnpr7f).

Public service commissions that weighed in supported the provisions on vendor neutrality. The Vermont Public Service Board said the neutrality provisions in the RFP “will ensure that any disparate treatment is the result of operational considerations, not an administrator favoring its affiliate or its own ... telecommunications interests” (http://xrl.us/bnpsap). The Idaho Public Utilities Commission said the RFP “requires strong neutrality and high performance standards and presents important questions regarding a potential dual-vendor approach” and how multiple vendors might create inefficiencies and additional costs (http://xrl.us/bnpsax). “It is possible that seamlessness in number porting could be compromised with multiple vendors and the Idaho Commission encourages careful review of multiple vendors to ameliorate this possibility.”