Verizon Seeks to Eliminate ‘Obsolete’ Copper Services in Sandy-Ravaged Areas
Superstorm Sandy continues to occupy FCC officials’ time, as Verizon executives have been pushing for permission to discontinue three “obsolete” services that run on the copper destroyed in October. Telegraph, program audio and metallic service were being purchased by only seven customers in the affected areas, and none has objected to their discontinuance, Verizon said (http://bit.ly/19fhxrd): “There is no basis for delaying or denying Verizon’s filing.”
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
This discontinuance filing in docket 13-149 is separate from Verizon’s petition in docket 13-150 to replace landline service with its wireless Voice Link service on Fire Island, N.Y. This three-service petition “relates solely to the areas in lower Manhattan and New Jersey where Superstorm Sandy destroyed Verizon’s copper network and Verizon now provides services solely over more resilient fiber infrastructure,” the telco said. It said that covers “almost all” of the interstate telecom services previously available over copper. Some cautioned in interviews that if the FCC decides on the two dockets separately, it might complicate an already complex set of issues raised by destruction of the copper facilities.
"The three largely obsolete services at issue here are incompatible with fiber as a technical matter,” said Maggie McCready, Verizon executive director-public policy, in an ex parte filing discussing her meeting with Chief Julie Veach and other Wireline Bureau officials. “These services provide speeds around 150 baud -- 1/16th of the original 2400 baud dial up modem and 1/10,000th of a DS1 circuit."
"Verizon was always free to file a Section 214(a) for those specific services at any time, regardless of what happened with Sandy and Voice Link,” said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld, referring to that section of the Communications Act. “The problem here is simply that the way this has unfolded has made a real mess of things, and the FCC needs to be careful what sort of precedent it sets in light of the importance of this case and the precedent it sets for the transition” to Internet Protocol service, he said. These may be separate requests, but they all flow from “the same set of facts,” Feld said. “It could be argued by people that it has a precedential effect."
No one filed an objection solely in docket 13-149, Verizon said. Those who filed a single set of objections in both this and the Voice Link docket didn’t address these three specific services or the effect on the community if they are discontinued, it said. The FCC’s data request contained no questions related to this application (CD Aug 15 p1), and neither the New York nor New Jersey telecom commissions objected to the application to discontinue these services, Verizon said.
"Ultimately, the FCC may very well grant Verizon’s 214(a) with regard to these specific services while doing something else in the separately docketed proceeding,” Feld said. “But at this stage, it does not cause Verizon any harm to leave the question open until the FCC collects all the relevant data and finishes its inquiry. By contrast, the FCC may unintentionally complicate matters by trying to separate out and rule on a set of specific services while the general questions raised in the related docket remain pending.”