NTCA, NARUC Warn FCC Against VoIP Numbering Move Without Title II

Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld told us he didn't believe the FCC would classify VoIP service under Title II in the looming order. "They are trying to get a 5-0 vote here," emailed Feld, whose group has concerns about VoIP direct numbering access without Title II but believes they can be addressed (see 1506080030 and 1506110036). Industry representatives said they doubted the FCC would classify VoIP service under Title II in the draft order. An FCC spokesman had no comment.

NTCA urged the FCC to reconsider giving interconnected VoIP providers direct access to phone numbers, "given the adverse legal and practical implications" of providing such access to entities that weren't telecom carriers. "As the industry as a whole struggles with the problem of rural call completion, the implementation of the IP Transition, and a Local Number Portability Administrator Transition, introducing self-declared, non-certificated [interconnected] VoIP providers into the porting, routing, interconnection, and billing ecosystems will only add to the current disarray," NTCA said in a filing Thursday in docket 13-97.

NTCA questioned FCC authority to "implement such a novel regulatory regime" absent Title II. If the FCC doesn't classify VoIP offerings as telecom service, the commission can't give VoIP providers number porting rights -- allowing customers to keep their numbers when changing providers -- reserved to telecom carriers providing telecom services, the rural telco group said. NTCA said direct VoIP numbering could also exacerbate traffic-identification problems, sparking phantom traffic disputes, and complicate intercarrier compensation, potentially "unduly accelerating the transition to bill-and-keep" under which carriers don't charge each other for traffic exchanges.

NARUC said it believed many VoIP providers offered Title II telecom services and were thus telecom carriers under the law. But, if the FCC isn't going to classify VoIP under Title II, then NARUC said the agency can't give VoIP providers direct numbering access. In a letter to senior FCC staffers, NARUC said VoIP service offered to the public for a fee was "far more" of a Title II telecom service than broadband Internet access, which the FCC reclassified under Title II in its net neutrality order. "The primary service provided by VoIP is real-time voice communications between two parties," NARUC said. "It is the functional equivalent of telephone service that has been regulated as a common carrier service since the Communications Act was first adopted in 1934 and as a 'telecommunications service' since that definition ... was added by Congress" in the 1996 Telecom Act. Noting the state role on area-code exhaust and number-conservation efforts, NARUC said the FCC needs to ensure VoIP providers "are responsive to state requests and instructions as a condition to access to numbers." VoIP participants in direct-numbering trials weren't cooperative, NARUC said.

Separately, AT&T opposed Level 3's proposed rule changes that seek to ensure CLECs can still collect end-office local switching charges when completing calls from VoIP partners with direct access to numbers. Level 3 was inviting the FCC "to yet again revise its rules to conform to Level 3's business plan," AT&T said in an ex parte filing. Neither the FCC nor stakeholders had had an opportunity to fully consider all of the implications of Level 3's proposals, AT&T said. Level 3 appeared concerned it would lose its "gatekeeper role that it and other CLECs have played" regarding VoIP numbering, which has provided CLECs with revenue from VoIP providers for access to numbers and from other telecom carriers for tariffed access charges, AT&T said. If the FCC adopts the draft order, VoIP providers could interconnect directly with tandem switch providers, bypassing CLECs, or keep their CLEC partners and share access-charge revenues, AT&T said.

AT&T said Level 3's proposals conflicted with the recent FCC VoIP symmetry order "clarification" sought by Level 3, which AT&T said didn't address situations where CLECs don't provide phone numbers. "These are circumstances that have great potential for arbitrage and fraud," AT&T said. "Particularly with respect to originating access charges, it may be difficult to assess what if any switched access function a CLEC may be performing if it is not listed in the [Number Porting Administration Center] data base."

Level 3 said the FCC needed to further clarify rules to head off disputes over intercarrier compensation if it gives VoIP providers direct numbering access. In a filing, Level 3 said the VoIP symmetry rule clarified that all LECs could assess end-office local switching access charges when they and VoIP partners provide "the functional equivalent of end office local switching." But the FCC needed to clarify the same rights would apply when the VoIP provider has direct numbering access, otherwise "a host of new disputes could arise," even in cases when VoIP/CLEC partners "continue to perform precisely the same functions for which they are indisputably permitted to charge access today." Level 3 said the changes would encourage IP interconnection by upholding CLEC access rights.

SmartEdgeNet and Vonage urged the FCC to speed direct numbering for VoIP providers, particularly those that had participated in the numbering trials, by giving them access upon the effective date of the new draft order, provided they meet commission requirements, the companies said in filings (here and here). But Bandwidth.com submitted a filing listing various risks that VoIP direct numbering access raised, including of traffic routing disruptions, increased fraud and abuse, 911 issues, various enforcement complications and increased intercarrier compensation and interconnection disputes.