WIRELESS CARRIERS SEEK FULL FCC REVIEW OF BUREAU LETTER ON LNP

In a filing late Fri., the carriers said the July 3 letter from Wireless Bureau Chief John Muleta to Verizon Wireless should be treated as “nonbinding” guidance. Otherwise, it said, the letter addressed new regulatory issues without answering how the same points were teed up in a separate FCC proceeding. If the guidance were binding, the 5 carriers said, it would abrogate their contractual rights, “upset the delicate balance of benefits and obligations in wireless service arrangements and harm rather than serve the public interest.” They took issue with how the bureau addressed what restrictions -- if any -- could be imposed on the process of porting out numbers to new operators, beyond the typical customer validation requirements needed for fraud prevention.

Verizon Wireless earlier asked the Commission to clarify that carriers couldn’t impose “nonporting” conditions when allowing a customer to take a number along when switching providers. Verizon said a carrier couldn’t refuse to port a customer’s number if the individual owed an early termination fee or otherwise had an outstanding balance. The bureau agreed, saying in the letter that carriers couldn’t refuse to shift a customer’s number to a new provider while attempting to collect fees or settle an account.

In the current process in which customers terminate contracts, a carrier can “remind” departing subscribers of outstanding obligations, giving them an opportunity to make an informed decision on whether to incur new fees, the 5- company filing said. Because customers typically complete the minimum term of a contract or pay an early termination fee, carriers usually recover part of “their upfront investment in the customer without additional cost,” the carriers said. “This equilibrium would be upset under an unconditional porting regime in which the abandoned carrier has no opportunity to review with the departing customer any outstanding obligations and in fact must facilitate a breach of its own contract.”

The filing, which petitions the FCC for either a declaratory ruling or an application for review, is part of a continued back- and-forth by some parts of the wireless industry at the Commission on outstanding LNP implementation issues. Verizon Wireless, which said last month it no longer was opposing LNP, wasn’t part of the Fri. filing, nor was T- Mobile USA. CTIA said earlier this year it would focus on implementation details at the FCC, in part by seeking a ruling on intermodal porting. The group asked whether wireline carriers had an obligation to port customers’ numbers to wireless carriers whose service areas overlapped the wireline carriers’ rate centers. That issue involves how porting is required when a wireline customer wants to take a number to a wireless carrier that doesn’t have a presence in the rate center where that customer is located.

CTIA also sought FCC clarification on other issues, including those involving porting intervals, how Enhanced 911 services would be handled during transition periods and whether carriers should have to enter interconnection negotiations for number portability. In the July 3 letter, Muleta answered questions such as about E911 service in porting intervals but said he would address other issues, including the intermodal porting question raised by CTIA, in advance of the Nov. 24 deadline.

As that deadline approaches, some implementation issues also involve rural carriers. NTCA, OPASTCO and the Rural Telecom Group told the FCC last week that “rural wireless number portability guidelines and practices” were needed. The filing said an urban wireless carrier didn’t have local interconnection to a rural LEC or rural wireless carrier’s rate center. That meant calls between urban wireless subscribers and rural LEC customers and urban wireless subscribers and rural wireless subscribers were toll. The groups said if a rural wireless number were taken by a customer switching service to an urban wireless provider that had neither numbering resources nor local interconnection in the rural rate center, that would shift the cost of delivering calls to the ported number to the rural provider, rather than to the urban carrier receiving the new business, the filing said. Under such a scenario, calls to the ported number couldn’t be completed without the originating carrier’s incurring toll costs, the groups said.

In their filing, the 5 carriers said they sought full FCC action on their request by Sept. 1. Similarly, an earlier CTIA request for clarification on implementation issues surrounding LNP had urged the FCC to provide answers by Labor Day.

It’s still unclear whether Congress will address the LNP deadline. Sources have said Senate Appropriations Chmn. Stevens (R-Alaska) has shown interest in delaying the deadline, but no legislation to that effect has been introduced. Stevens declined to offer an amendment that would delay the LNP deadline to either the spectrum relocations trust fund (HR-1320) bill or to FCC reauthorization legislation (S-1264). However, the Senate Appropriations Committee will mark up the Commerce Justice State appropriation bill when it returns in Sept.