AT&T’s plans to upgrade its network and replace rural copper lines...
AT&T’s plans to upgrade its network and replace rural copper lines with wireless (CD Nov 8 p11) is “the single most important development in telecom since passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996,” said Harold Feld, Public Knowledge senior vice…
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president, in a blog post Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bnznsr). The need for the FCC to develop a cohesive policy framework to manage the transition from TDM to IP-based services is “long overdue,” wrote Lawrence Spiwak, Phoenix Center president, in a blog post Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bnzorx). Spiwak predicted “lots of bumps in the road,” including “tremendous opposition to developing a smooth transition from companies whose business plans are based upon arbitraging the current system.” Feld’s Tuesday post Tuesday said AT&T’s plan impacts “just about every aspect of wireline and wireless policy,” because the FCC must balance concerns about competition and fairness with the broader question of “what happens when our 100-year-old copper safety net gets replaced” by “essentially unregulated IP-based networks.” Pro-competitive policies such as special access, unbundled network elements, and “even access to phone numbers” will be up in the air “when the telephone network that supports these policies disappears,” Feld said. Most importantly, the FCC must decide whether Internet Protocol networks must interconnect with each other, and what to do when peering disputes lead to refusals to exchange traffic between networks, he said. “What happens if AT&T and Comcast cannot agree on terms, and several million AT&T Wireless subscribers can no longer call home?” People never expected that cable systems might go for months without carrying TV stations because of “retrans fights,” he said: When people with Comcast phone service can’t call AT&T subscribers, “the impact -- for the economy, for public safety, and for the individuals involved -- is a hell of a lot more significant than missing ‘Mad Men.'” The FCC’s USF/intercarrier compensation order of November 2011 was a “significant” step in that the commission said it would no longer subsidize traditional TDM architecture, Spiwak told us. “That really was the first boulder down the hill.” The problem now, he said, is figuring out a new paradigm, calling AT&T’s proposal for deregulatory test markets a “really interesting way of handling it.”