By opposing AT&T’s petition to launch a “comprehensive empirical inquiry”...
By opposing AT&T’s petition to launch a “comprehensive empirical inquiry” into the Internet Protocol transition, Cbeyond and several other CLECs are asking the commission to act “adversely to the best interests of American consumers,” said Bob Quinn, AT&T senior vice…
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president-federal regulatory, in a letter Monday (http://xrl.us/boax6n). Quinn said he knows why the CLECs have asked the FCC to reject AT&T’s proposed wire-center trials, in which several telco regulations would be lifted: The CLECs want to slow down technological convergence and IP network upgrades “in order to preserve their own TDM-based business plans as long as possible.” Quinn questioned the CLECs’ argument that extending monopoly-era regulations would give ILECs a greater incentive to invest and innovate in order to remain competitive. He criticized the CLECs’ proposal to impose new IP interconnection obligations. “CLECs present IP-to-IP interconnection as a futuristic endeavor that could never succeed in the absence of regulatory compulsion,” Quinn said. But any Skype user has already experienced the IP interconnection that occurs absent regulation. “Their calls to each other go through -- not because their ISPs have any regulatory obligation to interconnect (they do not), but because it is in their mutual self-interest."