Push Grows for Extending FCC Deadlines on USTelecom Relief Bid; Some Seek Dismissal
More parties asked the FCC to extend comment deadlines or dismiss a USTelecom petition seeking incumbent telco forbearance relief from wholesale network-sharing and related requirements (see 1805040016). State regulatory commissions in California and Ohio, the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates and Northwest Telecommunications Association (NTA) sought or supported comment date extensions in recent days. The Wholesale Voice Line Coalition backed Incompas requests to dismiss the petition or at least extend deadlines (see 1805110059).
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Windstream CEO Tony Thomas disputed a study in the USTelecom petition. "Do not let the study’s title, 'Assessing the Impact of Forbearance from 251(c)(3) on Consumers, Capital Investment and Jobs,' fool you -- this is at its heart a work of fiction," blogged Thomas. "Or maybe it’s a fairy tale. It’s definitely not an impartial study." Section 251(c)(3) of the Communications Act -- mandating CLEC discounted wholesale access to ILEC unbundled network elements (UNEs) -- is one of the key provisions the incumbent telcos are targeting for relief. The FCC didn't comment Monday.
“The fight is really over the pricing of UNEs, especially with the FCC's BDS [business data service] Order deregulating ILEC DS1 and DS3 special access," emailed CCMI telecom consultant Andrew Regitsky. "While the need for TELRIC [total element long run incremental cost] priced UNEs is less than in 1996, some smaller companies will almost certainly be hurt competitively if UNE prices increase. I don't doubt the FCC will consider the plight of these companies in a proceeding; however, based on the track record of this Commission, my money is on a victory for USTelecom.”
USTelecom filed an opposition Monday to Incompas' motion to dismiss its petition. The incumbent telco group said its petition made a prima facie case for relief: Incompas' "assertion that the Petition nonetheless is not complete-as-filed is based on a misreading of the scope and purpose of the relevant rule, particularly as applied to the confidential information that is the focus."
The Ohio Public Utilities Commission sought extensions of the June 7 and June 22 deadlines for comment and replies to Aug. 6 and Sept. 5, said a motion Friday in docket 18-141. Those are the dates sought by Incompas and backed previously by NARUC and others (see 1805170034 and 1805140047), and supported in new filings by NASUCA (here) and the NTA (here).
The California Public Utilities Commission wants even longer extensions, to Sept. 5 and Oct. 22, saying it's "in a unique position" -- "other parties to this proceeding may comment; we must comment" under state law. "There are 26 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in California containing, as of the 2010 Census, 33.5 million people," said a CPUC motion posted Monday. "Competition data from these MSAs are not ancillary to this proceeding. ... [W]e simply need more time." Although the state agency "takes no position on whether USTelecom’s petition violates the 'complete-as-filed' rule, we do agree with INCOMPAS that all of the data USTelecom relies on to support its petition ... must be in the record of the proceeding," the filing said. "We therefore join INCOMPAS’s Motion to Dismiss to that extent."
The Wholesale Voice Line Coalition backed Incompas' motions to dismiss the petition or to at least provide extensions, said the group's filing posted Monday. It consists of Access Point, BullsEye Telecom, Manhattan Telecommunications (Metropolitan Telecommunications), New Horizon Communications and Xchange Telecom. Granite Telecommunications earlier also backed the Incompas motions.
Thomas said Windstream will hire its own economist and use "real-world economics" to analyze the issues. He said the substantive flaws with the USTelecom study involve the actual impact to customers: "These economists have never done a conversion from a UNE T1, a TDM service, to next-generation products. This part of the study is actually a bit funny as it states: 'In our more gradual and realistic scenario, we assume 40% of end-customers will migrate to next-generation services in Year 1,' and the economists base that on the discontinuance of voice residential UNE-Ps [UNE-platforms] many years ago. Comparing simple voice UNE-P conversions to full-scale technology changeout is comical."