Disappointment doesn't accurately convey how competitive members of the Association for Local Telecommunications Services (ALTS, www.alts.org) feel about an FCC Enforcement Bureau (www.fcc.gov/eb) decision that Verizon Communications (www.verizon.com) did not violate FCC rules by refusing to convert certain of Net2000's special access circuits to enhanced extended links (EELs).
In its Memorandum Opinion and Order released Jan. 9, the FCC Enforcement Bureau denied a complaint against Verizon filed by Net2000 Communications Services Inc. (www.net2000.com), a CLEC that provides local exchange, exchange access, and interexchange telephone services within the service areas of Verizon. Net2000 wanted Verizon to re-price its circuits; Verizon refused.
"ALTS has been involved with ongoing discussions with the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau on this issue for over a year, and it is clear from those discussions that there is ambiguity over the meaning of the FCC's conversion rules," said John D. Windhausen Jr., president of ALTS.
"This result was never intended by the carriers, both CLECs and ILECs, that negotiated and proposed those rules, and the FCC must immediately rectify this absurd result," Windhausen said yesterday.
FCC rules implementing Section 251(c)(3) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 require ILECs to "convert" or re-price certain special access circuits into a combination of unbundled network elements (UNEs) called EELs.
While not a UNE itself, an EEL is comprised of an unbundled loop (including multiplexing/concentration equipment) and unbundled dedicated transport. The conversion of existing tariffed special access circuits to EELs will, in many cases, significantly reduce the CLEC's expense and commensurately decrease the ILEC's income for those facilities, according to the FCC.
In this complaint, Net2000 began asking Verizon in March 2000 to convert special access circuits to EELs, but Verizon refused.
Both parties relied on varying aspects of the FCC's UNE rules, which continue to be tweaked and changed, leaving the situation ripe for just such varying interpretations.
In any event, the FCC found that Net2000 failed to demonstrate that Verizon had refused to convert any special access circuits to EELs. The FCC also found that Verizon's determination that Net2000 special access circuits were not EEL-eligible did not violate the FCC EEL rules.
What ALTS members also find most disturbing is that the FCC found that its EEL rules prohibit the commingling of EELs with access services on the same facilities. The FCC stated specifically that for a DS3 circuit to meet certain conversion criteria, all of its derived DS1 circuits in turn must meet required criteria.
What this means is that basically, a CLEC may not have its EEL-eligible circuits share the same interoffice transport as its non-EEL-eligible circuits. ALTS says that this is a misreading of the order that instituted such criteria.
"It appears that the Enforcement Bureau has once again, in the context of a restricted enforcement proceeding without industry-wide participation, engaged in rulemaking by enforcement with sweeping implications beyond the interests of the named parties," said Jonathan Askin, ALTS's general counsel.
"Even assuming we had known the Enforcement Bureau was drafting such a terrible order, given the nature of restricted proceedings, we had no opportunity to lobby the issue, nor, for that matter, did the named plaintiff Net2000, which was dissolved months ago."
Askin contends that the only party truly unaffected by this order is Net2000, which declared bankruptcy "quite likely in part due to Verizon's discriminatory provisioning practices," he said.
More action can be expected on this ruling in the coming weeks.
