The Federal Communications Commission (FCC, www.fcc.gov) yesterday adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that seeks to identify a list of key performance measurements and standards for evaluating an ILEC's performance in provisioning wholesale facilities and services to competitors.
"With the adoption of this important notice, the commission begins a second phase in its implementation of the local competition provisions of the Telecommunications of 1996," said FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell, during the FCC's open meeting yesterday in Washington.
Competitors see the FCC's move as being one of the most significant pro-competitive actions the commission has taken since its line-sharing decision two years ago. This NPRM signals the commission's intent to move quickly to adopt a set of rules that, for instance, could ensure facilities-based CLECs have timely access to local loops provisioned by the ILECs, sources say.
Specifically, the FCC proposes the adoption of concrete federal rules that would require ILECs to provide loops and line-sharing UNEs to CLECs in a short and specific timeframe.
The incumbents would be subject to specific monetary penalties for failure to meet the FCC's forthcoming standards.
This important new set of rules would provide the commission's Enforcement Bureau (www.fcc.gov/eb) with strong tools to punish ILEC violations of the Telecom Act, according to representatives with CLEC Covad Communications Co. (www.covad.com).
Thus, for example, if a facilities-based CLEC such as Covad did not receive a loop on time from an incumbent phone company, Covad could be entitled to specific monetary damages for the late loop, the company spokesperson explains.
Covad Assistant General Counsel Jason Oxman praised the FCC actions, and said that "the real winners are the consumers and small businesses who will experience an even quicker and easier installation process with companies like Covad."
The NPRM offers for comment a set of 12 specific performance measurements and seeks comment on related issues of implementation, reporting requirements, and enforcement mechanisms. The FCC seeks to accomplish three goals:
1.) Create certainty in the marketplace by providing all carriers with bright line guidance about whether an ILEC has provided interconnection, collocation and access to unbundled network elements (UNEs) in a nondiscriminatory manner;
2.) Reduce reporting costs and minimize regulatory burdens by streamlining, standardizing, and simplifying the potentially divergent federal and state regulatory requirements; and
3.) Establish specific enforcement policies or guidelines, including self- effectuating remedies for responding to violations of any national measurements and standards that the Commission adopts.
Lawrence E. Sarjeant, vice president of regulatory affairs and general counsel for the Bells' lobbyist the United States Telecom Association (USTA, www.usta.org), hopes that "the industry can agree on a limited set of performance measures and standards to be consistently applied across the nation."
But Sarjeant said that the FCC must not add more measures to an already lengthy list imposed upon the nation's ILECs by the states.
This would "unnecessarily increase the regulatory burdens on ILECs," he said.
"National measures are long overdue," counters H. Russell Frisby Jr., president of the Competitive Telecommunications Association (CompTel, www.comptel.org). "The commission is fortunate, because it can build upon the foundation laid by the state commissions; indeed, state innovation in this realm is the sole reason that we are talking about national performance measures today."
