IP Transition Trials Not Needed for Verizon
Verizon doesn’t have to participate in an FCC-sanctioned IP transition trial, because it’s not making any changes that require regulatory approval, and has no need to test its proven fiber technologies, executives said at a company event Thursday on the role of fiber in the wireline network. They said locations where Verizon is building out fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), customers will still get TDM-based switched voice service -- simply carried over fiber instead of copper. AT&T said this week it plans to stop offering TDM service to new customers in its two testbed towns in the second half of 2015 (CD May 29 p2).
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AT&T’s trials seem to be designed to switch customers to an IP-based telephony service, whereas Verizon plans to continue offering its traditional circuit-switched TDM-based phone service, said Robert Mudge, Verizon president-consumer and mass business markets. The only difference is that Verizon will be offering its service over FTTH, an outgrowth of the telco’s transition from copper to fiber starting in the ‘80s, he said. “Fiber can serve any different type of technology for the voice service, and we're going to keep it the same, because there’s other things I want to figure out first in that transition process before necessarily making it more complicated with the regulatory process on top of it."
Verizon will watch the AT&T trials “because people keep asking me” about the trials, said Chris Levendos, Verizon vice president-national operations. “I was like, ‘I guess I should go look at it.'” Levendos “didn’t read” the long documents put out by the FCC on the proposed wire center trials, he said. “I don’t mean that to be smug,” he said. “It’s just, we are in a continuation of really what we're doing,” and have been doing, he said. That AT&T and Google have signaled their desire to build out FTTH is “just confirming that we've done the right thing,” Levendos said.
"Gaining FCC approval to eventually retire TDM facilities should be a pretty big financial boost for the telcos,” said analyst Paul Gallant of Guggenheim Partners, who attended the event. “Because AT&T’s footprint has more rural areas than Verizon, the transition is an even bigger deal to AT&T, which also may be why it decided to take the lead with regulators."
"AT&T truly was setting it up as a trial to move customers to an unregulated service,” said Maggie McCready, Verizon vice president-public policy. “This is not a ’trial’ for Verizon; this is our next logical step in how our networks and services are evolving.” There will be no change to the customer other than additional fiber-based alternatives to complement switched phone service, she said. “There’s no trial involved here to test something for a year or two; we've been testing the fiber network since 2003 or 4 since we started deploying it. It’s already proven. So, it isn’t a test.” Where Verizon retires copper, it follows the “existing regulatory processes” including Communications Act Section 214 discontinuance notices, she said. “It doesn’t have to happen in the context of a unique trial for which there is a new and separate set of rules.” AT&T didn’t comment.
AT&T might need a trial because some of its proposed services “might not have all of the same capabilities as the old phone line, and so might not support all of the same things like dial-up modems or faxes or medical monitoring equipment,” said David Young, Verizon vice president-federal regulatory affairs. Verizon’s fiber, in contrast, does support those functions, he said.