Charter's Internet Peering Policy Needs Revision, Level 3 Says

have discussed one and "expressed an openness to considering Level 3's concerns," Level 3 said. Those concerns, it told FCC staffers, include the peering policy's duration. Charter promised to keep its policy only through December 2018, but "a reasonable agreement would need to last for a longer period to ensure stability, performance and scalability," Level 3 said, adding that five to seven years would be more in line with similar traffic exchange agreements it has signed. Charter's policy also should be explicit in covering all Internet traffic, including content delivery network traffic, and not contain any trial period before establishing a peering relationship, because that's not needed for entities that already interconnect and exchange traffic with Charter or Time Warner Cable, Level 3 said. The peering policy also should spell out that new interconnection locations must be mutually agreeable, instead of Charter's decision unilaterally; and should replace its somewhat unclear terms for augmenting existing interconnection capacity with a guideline requiring each party to do that augmentation at its own expense when use exceeds 70 percent for some period of time, Level 3 said. Traffic growth shouldn't be a valid criteria for suspending an interconnection agreement, and Charter's policy should prohibit either peer from any peering traffic discrimination "based on origin, destination or type of traffic," Level 3 said. The ex parte meeting involved Level 3's Nicolas Pujet, senior vice president-corporate strategy; Paul Savill, senior vice president-product management; David Siegel, vice president-product management; and staff from the Enforcement, Media and Wireline bureaus and the offices of General Counsel and Strategic Planning. The FCC has indicated peering policies are one of the things it is examining in reviewing Charter's plans to buy Bright House Networks and TWC (see 1510130063).