The FCC (www.fcc.gov) ended its investigation into cageless collocation complaints against GTE Services Corp., after the company agreed to pay a fine of $2.7 million to the U.S. Treasury and to improve its treatment of local competitors. GTE recently merged with Bell Atlantic Corp. to form Verizon Communications (www.verizon.com).
GTE also promised to speed up needed improvements in how it treats local competitors, a process that will include better and quicker performance, the company told X-Change yesterday.
"Whenever there is a request from a competitor, they will be issued a service date with that request and we will guarantee 95 percent on-time performance," explained Briana Gowing, a GTE spokeswoman. "This will become effective in December, which is sooner than originally planned."
The FCC was investigating whether GTE violated the federal agency's requirement to provide cageless collocation to competitors. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires ILECs, such as GTE and the Bell companies, to let competitors collocate their own equipment in the ILEC premises.
When implementation of the Telecom Act initially began, the ILECs told the CLECs that they had to build a security cage around their collocated equipment. This increased costs and delays to the CLEC.
In an attempt to hasten local competition and accelerate collocation, the FCC in its March 1999 Advanced Services Order told the ILECs to offer another form of collocation without the security cage, a.k.a. cageless collocation. The FCC gave the ILECs until June 1, 1999, to adhere to the new rule.
In February 2000, following numerous CLEC complaints, the FCC Enforcement Bureau started an inquiry into whether GTE was abiding by these rules.
While GTE admits that it had denied 51 requests for cageless collocation after the FCC's deadline, the company argues that it wasn't required to come into compliance with the commission's rules by the June 1999 date.
"There was language in the order that we thought offered more time," Gowing says. "We have been working to meet the order [quickly] but two months just was not enough time."
In addition to the monetary payment, GTE also is subject to automatic penalties if it fails to comply with certain collocation performance measurements within six months, according to the commission. The FCC had previously given the company nine months when it granted the merger of GTE and Bell Atlantic.
Bell Atlantic also met the same fate earlier this year. The Enforcement Bureau in March entered into a consent decree with Bell Atlantic-New York in connection with the ILEC's loss and/or mishandling of orders submitted electronically by the CLECs.
In that agreement, Bell Atlantic agreed to pay the U.S. Treasury $3 million and to adhere to certain local competition performance measurements.
