FCC Should Move Forward to Designate Telcordia as new LNPA, Say USTelecom, CTIA
The FCC should move forward to approve Telcordia as the new Local Number Portability Administrator (LNPA), taking the contract away from Neustar, said USTelecom and CTIA in joint reply comments posted by the FCC Monday. Federal law enforcement didn’t pick sides but filed reply comments asking the commission to move forward with caution.
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"Other than Neustar itself, not a single commenter has asked the Commission to award the next LNPA contract to the incumbent Administrator,” USTelecom and CTIA said. Parts of the filing in 95-116 were heavily redacted (http://bit.ly/1sR8B5P). The two groups discounted arguments by Neustar that the selection process was flawed (CD July 29 p6). “Concerns about transition costs and attendant risks are misplaced,” CTIA and USTelecom said. “The record shows” these risks were already evaluated by the North American Numbering Council and North American Portability Management, they said.
CTIA and USTelecom said any delay in implementing a new contract beyond July 1, 2015, “would add more than $1 million in charges to carriers and their customers.” The groups base this figure on the terms of the current LNPA contract, which includes a price escalation clause of 6.5 percent above a base of more than $440 million. Any extension of the LNPA contract “beyond its scheduled June 2015 expiration will automatically trigger that clause, at a cost of over $40 million per month,” they said.
The FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Secret Service filed joint reply comments, but did not weigh in during the initial comment round. While not supporting either vendor, the agencies said it’s “appropriate for the Commission to consider the ability of the LNPA vendor to satisfy the important law enforcement, public safety, and national security equities of the Federal, State, Local, and Tribal law enforcement agencies who rely on the important and highly sensitive services the LNPA provides to assist virtually all significant criminal and national security investigations.” Reliable information from the LNPA is “vital to the day-to-day work of law enforcement agencies and protects the privacy interests of the public,” the federal agencies said (http://bit.ly/Vd9Yjj).
Reply comments from the Public Utility Division of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission were the only others posted by the FCC by our deadline. The division also didn’t advocate for either provider but asked the FCC to ensure the impact on consumers is minimal and that a change won’t hurt the public’s ability to call 911 (http://bit.ly/Vdaxtj).
"A wide array of organizations” including federal law enforcement, state regulators, Intrado and small carriers “have called into question different elements of the LNPA selection process, including the lack of focus on national security requirements, the risks inherent in a transition, neutrality, and the lack of input from smaller providers,” a Neustar spokeswoman said Monday. “Today, the per-subscriber cost for the LNPA approximately works out to less than 50 cents per year. When compared to the robust competition in the telecom market today and the billions of dollars in consumer savings resulting from a flawless LNP system, having the FCC take a fresh look at the process doesn’t seem like a close call.” -- Howard Buskirk (hbuskirk@warren-news.com)