POWELL PROMISES ENFORCEMENT STEPS IF LNP DEADLINE ISN'T MET

“Local number portability is an absolute essential,” Powell said. “As far as I am concerned, Nov. 24 is for real. I certainly don’t see any reason, nor am I entertaining, delaying it.” He acknowledged that wireless carriers were waiting for implementation guidance on some implementation issues. FCC officials, including Wireless Bureau Chief John Muleta, have said repeatedly they will issue implementation guidance “well in advance” of the deadline. But the agency hasn’t met a Sept. 1 deadline requested by CTIA for issuing such guidance.

“We are not hardhearted. There are still issues to be resolved but I think the carrier community needs to note we are going to get those resolved well in advance, so people have an understanding of what to do,” Powell said.

On the enforcement side, he said the Commission had expressed a similar intent to enforce its E911 regulations and had followed it up with enforcement actions that included significant findings, forfeitures, consent decrees and carrier commitments to plans for ultimate deployment. “I think that’s a pretty good example of how we might approach it,” he said. “Until we get some of these rules out about business practices, I can’t tell you about the full range of things that might constitute an enforceable action.” There’s the question of whether a carrier is technically capable of doing LNP and, if so, under what terms and conditions, he said. Powell used as an example whether there was a porting interval for carrying out LNP in 2 hours or 24 hours. “If we say something about that formally, that could be an enforcement action,” he said. “That stuff is coming together but it’s not finished yet.”

The FCC’s eyeing of enforcement of the deadline comes as the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., has solicited responses to 2 separate petitions for mandamus on wireless LNP sought by CTIA and 3 wireless carriers. Alltel, AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless told the D.C. Circuit late Mon. that the FCC was attempting to “construct numerous roadblocks to judicial review” on their wireless LNP challenge. The Commission recently filed an opposition brief at the D.C. Circuit to her 3 carriers’ petition for mandamus seeking relief from the Nov. deadline. The carriers have argued that federal law exempted mobile operators from having to provide LNP and that Congress explicitly had imposed porting obligations only on LECs. Among other things, the FCC told the court that mandamus wasn’t an avenue of relief because the Commission was under no duty to act on the LNP-related petition to rescind within any particular timetable. The carriers argued in their reply brief that the court lacked authority to “freeze the status quo” until a threshold question of jurisdiction was raised.

Responding to a question, Powell disputed that there was any rift in how the Wireless Bureau and the Office of Engineering & Technology were viewing the 800 MHz proceeding. The FCC is examining proposals for mitigating interference to public safety users in the band, ranging from interference mitigation techniques such as best practices to rebanding solutions. “We have differences in emphasis sometimes,” Powell said, but not more major differences. “I think we are on the verge of making pretty significant progress.”