IP Transition Not an Excuse to Water Down Competition, Wheeler Says
GRAPEVINE, Texas -- After leading the audience at Comptel’s conference in a chant of “competition, competition, competition,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said Monday the “IP transition is not an excuse to limit competition.” He said the agency is exploring some actions, praised by Comptel and Public Knowledge, including the elimination of anti-competitive special access provisions, possibly making copper available to competitors when it’s being retired, and vowing that the commission will “step in” if the industry can’t voluntarily find a way to assure VoIP interconnection.
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During a panel before Wheeler’s speech, Comptel CEO Chip Pickering stressed the importance of dealing with special access practices (CD Aug 27 p1) such as requiring long-term contracts. The “lock-up provisions” are “causing uncertainty, unreasonably raising costs and delaying the transition to IP,” he said. Saying the practices do “not serve competition,” Wheeler said he has directed the Wireline Bureau to recommend ways to alleviate their impacts on the IP transition. The commission had passed an order authorizing the collection of special access data, but Wheeler said the agency is not “idly waiting” for the numbers to come in, saying “there are serious questions about the current special access regime’s ability to ensure continued access at just and reasonable rates, terms and conditions.” Other steps are being considered to “promote and enhance competition during and after” the IP transition, Wheeler said. “Let me be clear: Transitions to IP are not a license to limit competition."
After disputes such as one between AT&T and Sprint in Michigan over IP interconnection agreements (CD April 17 p13), Wheeler said he preferred the industry work out agreements on its own, but that he’s prepared to take action. “I will be watching very, very closely, and if industry does not step up, we will step in,” Wheeler vowed. He stopped short of saying the agency has Communications Act Section 251 authority but said the agency believes it has congressionally granted authority over interconnections.
"Too often today, competitive providers that have implemented IP solutions are forced by incumbents to interconnect using yesterday’s technology, TDM,” said Wheeler. “This deprives customers of benefits of the IP transition, like HD voice."
Wheeler also said copper remains important even in this “high-speed, fiber-driven world,” especially in the “last leg of delivery.” Technological advances, such as an Alcatel-Lucent prototype that can deliver 1 Gbps downloads and uploads over copper, only add to its importance, said Wheeler. He intends to propose a series of measures to improve the copper retirement process to strengthen such values as competition, said Wheeler. “Where copper is being taken offline, should competitors have the opportunity to buy the copper so that a valuable resource is not wasted?” he asked. “And where copper is not being retired, how do we ensure that it is being maintained adequately? I intend to propose a series of measures to address these and related issues, while ensuring that incumbents and competitive providers alike are not held back in fiber deployment. Our goal should be to improve our copper retirement process to strengthen our core values, including competition."
Comptel was heartened Wheeler intends to deal with “exclusionary contracts,” which lock in “unreasonable terms and conditions and significantly impede competition in this market,” Pickering said in a statement. “Certain large providers only want to interconnect on their terms."
Wheeler’s stance on interconnection was also praised by NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield. She said in a statement that without the “seamless exchange of data between networks,” technological innovations “will be for naught -- and consumers will suffer -- if we treat technological advancement as an excuse to toss out or water down” consumer protection rules. “For too long, special access and other pro-competitive actions at the FCC have remained stalled,” said Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney Jodie Griffin.