Telcordia Contract's VoIP Treatment Points to Need for Further Review, Group Says

The FCC ruled in 2015 that interconnected VoIP providers can obtain phone numbers directly through the Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC), with interconnected VoIP deemed a telecom service for purposes of its Part 52 numbering rules. The FCC decision to do that without generally classifying interconnected VoIP as a telecom service is being challenged in court by NARUC (see 1604050013).

"NAPM and iconectiv appear to have gone much further than the Commission," the LNP Alliance said. "The MSA finds that in gaining access to the NPAC and sharing User Data through the NPAC, an interconnected VoIP provider will be considered to be offering 'telecommunications services' for routing, rating, and billing purposes, and also when it comes to network maintenance. MSA, § 6.1.2.2.4.1. What else is there? The MSA therefore seems to amount to a finding (by the NAPM carriers and iconectiv) that an interconnected VoIP provider that accesses the NPAC directly will be classified as a carrier of 'telecommunications service' essentially for all purposes."

The LNP Alliance said the issue reinforces its concern that the "2,800-page MSA" and its many details should be thoroughly and publicly reviewed, though it took no position on the VoIP classification issue. "If the Commission approves the MSA, it will be signing off on an agreement that effectively reclassifies any interconnected VoIP provider that gains direct access to the NPAC as a telecommunications carrier offering 'telecommunications services,' not just for the purposes of Part 52, Numbering, but for essentially all purposes," the group said. "These provisions in the MSA call for broader input" and FCC analysis, it added.

"The characterization by the LNP Alliance is both accurate and logical," NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay emailed Monday. "The FCC continues to attempt to draw phantom and illogical distinctions where the statute does not. Even with substantial edits, approval of the MSA is flatly inconsistent with the idea that a service can be 'deemed' a 'telecommunications service' for less than all Title II obligations, absent a valid exercise of forbearance. The ex parte merely highlights what everyone that can read the Act has known all along: the emperor has no clothes -- that is -- interconnected VoIP is, in fact, a 'telecommunications service' as defined in the Act." The FCC had no comment.

The FCC should approve the MSA promptly and deny a Neustar appeal of a Wireline Bureau protective order, NAPM's outside counsel Todd Daubert said in a filing Monday about a talk with Diane Cornell, special counsel to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

CenturyLink said the MSA is an agreement between iconectiv and NAPM, the entity the FCC chose "to oversee the local number portability administrator" (LNPA). "There are no other parties to the agreement and, when it goes into effect, the MSA will govern the actions of the parties in the same way that a similar agreement has governed the relationship between the NAPM and Neustar, the current administrator," CenturyLink said in a filing posted Saturday summarizing meetings with Cornell and aides to three other commissioners. "There will be no other parties to the MSA. Instead, providers will subsequently enter into their own agreements with the administrator, or a service bureau that handles such a relationship for multiple, smaller providers."

An FCC delay in approving the MSA could delay the LNPA transition and cost consumers "many millions of dollars" each month, CenturyLink said. It disputed arguments for delaying MSA approval raised by critics, particularly Neustar and the LNP Alliance, which it said were "clearly separable from the sole question before the Commission at this time -- whether the MSA is an appropriate representation of the respective rights and responsibilities of the NAPM and iconectiv in its role" as the next LNPA.