IP Interconnection Regulatory Authority 'Open Question' for States
Federal and state regulators’ authority under Communications Act Sections 251 and 252 to require interconnection agreements in an IP format remains an open question given continued proceedings at the FCC and at the state level, industry lawyers said Friday. AT&T is suing the Michigan Public Service Commission in U.S. District Court in Kalamazoo over the PSC’s decision earlier this year to require the telco to allow IP-to-IP interconnection with Sprint (see 1404170038). There are also ongoing or recent interconnection issues in Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio and Puerto Rico, said Benjamin Aron, Sprint state regulatory counsel-Northeast, at an FCBA event.
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The FCC hasn’t fully decided its IP interconnection policy, but Congress was “really clear” in the 1996 Telecom Act in its writing of Sections 251 and 252, said NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay. “It’s hard to see how you get around those statutes.” The fight among ILECs and CLECs over federal IP interconnection policy became part of the House Communications Subcommittee’s fact gathering this year in preparation for a Communications Act re-write (see 1408110047).
FCC policy on IP interconnection remains an “open question,” but its 2011 reform order made clear that the commission expects providers to “negotiate in good faith,” said Curtis Groves, Verizon assistant general counsel-federal/state. The telco has attempted to negotiate in good faith and now has nine wireline interconnection agreements, he said. Verizon believes it has an incentive to interconnect when traffic on both sides is IP-based, but there’s a debate over who will pay for interconnection when one side of the traffic is IP-based and one side is TDM-based, Groves said.
Individual state statutes vary widely on the question of state regulators’ authority to regulate VoIP, but even a majority of states that pre-empt state regulators’ authority on VoIP reserve the regulators’ right to regulate interconnection, Ramsay said. NARUC’s generic position is that Sections 251 and 252 allow states’ authority on interconnection, he said. NARUC filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Michigan PSC in its U.S. District Court case, arguing in favor of PSC authority to require the AT&T-Sprint interconnection.