RALEIGH, N.C. -- Frustrated by unfavorable court rulings, FCC Chmn. Powell renewed his call for a complete rewrite of the 1996 Telecom Act, in a talk with N.C. business leaders here Fri. The 2nd day of a technology tour of Wilmington and Raleigh, Powell said the Telecom Act, while “wonderful as a paradigm shift,” is now “stuck in infinite churn as a legal document.” He noted that 8 years after the passage of the act, designed principally to spur local phone competition, the FCC still doesn’t have “validated rules” for making that happen. Powell’s comments came 3 days after the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., threw out most of the Commission’s Triennial Review Order, including its controversial decision to delegate UNE review rulings to state commissions (CD March 3 p1).

The FCC could still include an item on a national programmatic agreement (NPA) for tower siting on its agenda for the Thurs. open meeting, though it wasn’t on the sunshine notice (CD March 5 p7). Several sources said Comr. Abernathy had sought additional time for discussion of the proposed tower siting pact. Once an item is in the public notice for an agenda meeting, ex parte communications with the FCC initiated by outside parties must stop. This way, more time is allowed for communication on outstanding issues, sources said. Several industry sources said they viewed the opening as a positive development after thorny NPA issues prompted a flurry of ex parte filings last week. The pending NPA aims to streamline tower siting reviews under Sec. 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. Sec. 106 requires federal agencies to consider the effects of an “undertaking,” including tower construction, on historic properties. Last month, wireless carriers and historic preservation officials failed to bridge an impasse on several issues connected to the proposed agreement (CD Feb 20 p3). The Commission had given stakeholders until Feb. 19 to work out remaining differences, delaying a vote on the item from Feb. to the March agenda meeting. The agreement has been expected to be teed up for FCC approval as a report and order. The agreement was designed to become a pact signed by the FCC, Advisory Council for Historic Preservation and the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers. Meanwhile, Kris Monteith, deputy chief of the FCC’s Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau (CGB), told industry stakeholders the agency had made changes to a draft best practices document in response to concerns raised in discussions last week. The FCC has been working with the United South & Eastern Tribes (USET) on voluntary best practices for tower siting that could affect sites of cultural and religious significance on tribal land. Among concerns raised by industry over the earlier draft was the extent to which a non-response by a tribe on a tower siting request would lead to the potentially time-consuming step of FCC intergovernmental consultation with tribes (CD March 5 p9). “We will be making some changes to the draft document that we believe will be viewed positively from industry standpoint,” Monteith said, noting the changes stemmed from a discussion the Wireless Bureau and CGB had last week with USET officials. The agency also said it would release the draft best practices document in full to solicit industry feedback. Earlier in the week, the agency had circulated a summary, which Monteith said in the e-mail had created uncertainty in industry about what the rest of the document looked like. She said the full document was similar to the extensive summary released earlier. The FCC asked for industry feedback by the end of the day Thurs. “This is a good thing,” said one industry source of the additional time the FCC gave before the NPA is placed on an agenda for an open meeting. Meanwhile, a coalition of wireless companies told the FCC that negotiations in the last few weeks with the ACHP and others on the NPA had advanced in some areas. They cited progress on the issue of properties whose eligibility for the National Register of Historic Places is eligible but not yet determined. The coalition, which includes Cingular, Verizon Wireless, PCIA and T-Mobile, said compromise had been reached on the issue of potentially eligible properties. The agreement was that a requirement could be removed from the NPA concerning identification surveys for potentially eligible properties for visual effects. Other areas of agreement were that the NPA not mandate the use of qualified professionals for identification of eligible properties readily ascertainable from the office of a state historic preservation officer. In a separate filing last week, CTIA said U.S. Cellular has stressed the importance of the practical implications of the NPA as it relates to mid-size carriers and their quests for status as eligible telecom carriers. CTIA raised concerns that the NPA not dramatically increase costs and create more delays for the review process.

There was no agreement on whether the FCC should grant Level 3 petition seeking relief from access charges on “voice-embedded IP communications,” in comments filed with the Commission. Level 3 had asked the agency to forbear on rules that might be interpreted as permitting LECs to impose access charges on IP traffic originating or terminating on the public switched telephone network (PSTN), while the agency completes its reform of intercarrier compensation. The FCC last month ruled that Pulver.com’s computer-to- computer Free World Dialup service was an unregulated information service, marking the first “easy” step in addressing IP-based services (CD Feb 13 p1). However, many agreed Level 3 petition dealing with VoIP that touches the PSTN, raised more complicated issues, which should be addressed in the forthcoming VoIP rulemaking proceeding.

The U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., Tues. vacated much of the FCC’s Triennial Review Order, including the FCC’s decision to delegate UNE review decisions to state commissions. The court cut a broad swath through the portion of the FCC’s order dealing with the elements that make up the UNE platform, and left the other half, the broadband deregulation portion, unscathed. Shortly after release of the court decision, the FCC said it planned to seek a stay of the court’s order and an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The announcement came from Comrs. Copps, Martin and Adelstein, who made up the majority in the split decision last year. NARUC said it “expects to seek review” as well.

Comcast finds itself in the unusual position of fighting for the little guy on phone issues. Comcast Phone, a division of cable giant Comcast that provides traditional circuit-switched telephony, complained about some ILEC practices in a recent FCC filing. The letter was filed in response to BellSouth’s request for a declaratory ruling that state commissions not be allowed to require BellSouth to provide wholesale or retail broadband services to consumers who get voice services from CLECs when those accounts use unbundled network elements (UNEs).

U.S. carriers are concerned about a law recently adopted by Italy’s parliament that would require them to store “data relating to telephony traffic” for 24 -- and in some cases 48 -- months. “This is the longest duration we have seen and it will have an effect on us,” a source from a large U.S. ISP with global operations said: “It’s very costly to store information for such a long period of time.” The new law is expected to be published soon in the Federal Gazette -- equivalent to the U.S. Federal Register.

Giving VoIP a “new voice in Washington and in states,” several VoIP providers led by the VON Coalition officially announced a group to encourage a public policy that refrains from applying traditional telecom regulation to Internet voice communications. The group, called The Voice Over Internet Coalition, includes AT&T, Callipso, Convedia, iBasis, Intel, Intrado, ITXC, MCI, PointOne and Texas Instruments. The group, which has unofficially operated a few weeks (CD Dec 10 p4), announced new members and expanded principles Mon.

FCC Chmn. Powell expressed optimism Mon. technology could address the challenges of providing Enhanced 911 services on broadband networks offering VoIP applications. “We do have that rare opportunity to join hands and develop the solutions early, before our citizens and our consumers are using these services in overwhelming numbers,” he told a National Emergency Number Assn. (NENA) forum in Washington.

A panel of federal judges indicated annoyance with both sides of a payphone regulation dispute Fri., leading attorneys in the audience to speculate the court would uphold the FCC on the disputed rules. “I expect the court to say a pox on both your houses,” said lawyer after the 90 min. oral argument before the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C. Although the case -- Communications Vending Corp. v. FCC -- challenged the FCC’s Nov. 2002 payphone rules, the real dispute was between LECs and independent payphone providers (IPPs). It centered on a long-standing debate over whether LECs can impose access charges on independent payphone providers (IPPs).

Wireless firms and historic preservation officials failed to reach a compromise by an FCC target date on outstanding issues connected to a tower siting pact, according to a filing Thurs. at the agency. The Commission planned to have the national program agreement (NPA) ready for its Feb. agenda meeting, but last month gave participants until Feb. 19 to work out issues in time for the March meeting. “It appears in some important ways ground has been lost since then,” said the filing by the wireless coalition.