LNP Alliance, OTI Fault Proposed Telcordia Contract for Ignoring IP Transition
A proposed local number portability administrator contract is fundamentally flawed, the LNP Alliance and New America's Open Technology Institute (OTI) told the FCC, which is considering the master services agreement (MSA) between Ericsson's Telcordia (iconectiv) and North American Portability Management (NAPM). "The most critical omission from the MSA and from the LNPA Transition in general is that ... there has been no effort to incorporate the IP Transition into the LNPA Transition," the groups said in a letter accompanying other filings in docket 09-109. "Any plan to treat each Transition as a separate and disassociated initiative is nonsensical, since the two are inextricably intertwined in terms of timing, participants, technology, and application."
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The LNP Alliance and OTI have sought more time to review the MSA, but based on their initial review they submitted comments (many redacted) identifying issues "of significance to smaller carriers and consumers" and suggesting "constructive improvements" to the contract before carriers agree to its terms and payments. LNPA incumbent Neustar, NTCA and some others have also sought more time to review the MSA, while NAPM and Telcordia, backed by CTIA, USTelecom and Verizon, urged the commission to approve a draft MSA order expeditiously. The FCC, NAPM and Telcordia didn't comment Wednesday.
The LNP Alliance and OTI said the LNPA and IP transitions should occur concurrently, but there is "no mention whatsoever" of the IP transition in the MSA or its 2,500 pages of attachments. "To build a new NPAC [Number Portability Administration Center] at this stage that does not incorporate the IP Transition would be like rolling a Model T off the assembly line when you should have built a Tesla," the groups said. "An MSA that does not transparently anticipate and incorporate IP number porting also raises serious concerns about a hidden agenda (or decision) by the NAPM and/or Ericsson to derail the current statutory mandate and FCC policy in favor of a single, central NPAC that ensures a level playing field for all competitors."
The two groups said the IP transition could be delayed at least three years due to the omission, with costs outweighing savings from the LNPA transition, which they said benefits large carrier members of NAPM way more than smaller carriers. "The LNP Alliance members will not receive material cost reduction benefits from the LNPA transition, while the risk of business disruption to their operation looms large," they said. "At the same time, the IP Transition, which holds the promise of far higher economic benefit for all carriers as well as consumers seems to be subordinated to it, if not halted altogether." They are "deeply concerned" that PwC, NAPM's transition oversight manager, "has also failed to plan for" the IP transition.
The groups repeated concerns about the timelines for testing Telcordia's systems and migrating carriers from Neustar's systems. Between January and April, PwC cut the projected intervals for testing and data migration "by more than half" without explanation, they said. "It appears that [PwC] is striving to meet artificial deadlines rather than building the Transition from the ground up in terms of the necessary time for each phase," they said.
NAPM and its large carrier membership came under further attack. The LNP Alliance and OTI said NAPM should not continue to play such a large role in the LNPA transition unless it better represents smaller carriers, state regulators and consumers advocates. The FCC should require NAPM to offer smaller and midsize carriers lower dues and include consumer and state regulator representatives nominated by their national associations, they said. NAPM has said smaller parties are free to band together to pay dues and spread costs.
The LNP Alliance and OTI also urged the FCC to create more transparency by opening up more of the MSA to scrutiny by telecom business executives. They said the current confidentiality protections are too sweeping. If safeguards are needed to prevent Neustar -- which is challenging the FCC's LNPA selection order in court -- from gaining access to competitive bidding information, "those protections should be narrowly tailored to that company," they said.
The two groups said they continued to have concerns about Telcordia's neutrality because it's a unit of Ericsson, a major wireless industry manufacturer. They said Telcordia recently provided "useful background" on its revisions to a code of conduct, but they believe the code is too permissive in allowing executives and employees to hold up to a 1 percent financial interest in a telecom provider or manufacturer. "Telcordia defends this threshold by comparing it to Neustar's 5% threshold, but Neustar is an independent entity and Telcordia is not," the groups said. "There should not be employees, officers or directors of iconectiv or its subcontractors that hold, for example, a 1% interest [in] AT&T, Verizon, or for that matter, Ericsson (with the exception of the Ericsson directors)." They also objected to a proposed 270-day delay in implementing the code. "Either the Code of Conduct is necessary and is meaningful and must be fully implemented, or it begins to look like iconectiv (and to a lesser extent the Commission) is not taking the separation from Ericsson seriously," they said.