USTA SEEKS 11TH-HOUR STAY OF LNP RULES AT D.C. CIRCUIT

In turning down the request for a partial stay of the wireless-to-wireless LNP rules by the rural carriers, the D.C. Circuit cited a failure to show irreparable harm. But the D.C. Circuit ordered the FCC to file a response to the USTA petition by Nov. 26 on the USTA request for an emergency stay, with a USTA reply brief due Dec. 2.

“Allowing this desperate attempt at delay will only confuse consumers and serve to limit competition,” said CTIA Pres. Steve Largent.

The FCC late Thurs. turned down a petition for a stay (CD Nov 21 p2) filed by USTA and CenturyTel of the wireline- to-wireless LNP rules, released Nov. 10. That order directed wireline carriers to port numbers to wireless carriers whose coverage area overlapped the rate center in which the wireline number was assigned, as long as the mobile carrier kept the original rate center designation. USTA and CenturyTel argued that the rules imposed a competitive disadvantage on LECs.

In its stay request, USTA told the D.C. Circuit that allowing the new rules to take effect would cause “severe harm… Customers will port wireline numbers to wireless carriers pursuant to the unlawful rules, but wireline LECs will be unable to compete for customers currently served by wireless carriers.” Calling this the result of “regulatory favoritism,” the motion said the rules would cause loss of revenue, but suspending the requirements during a period of review wouldn’t hurt anyone. “Most wireless carriers have fought local number portability tooth and nail and should not be heard to claim that they will suffer if wireline-wireless LNP is further delayed,” USTA said. The motion cited the high implementation costs in small, rural exchanges and the loss of precise 911 location capability in some areas when a customer switched to wireless from wireline.

USTA’s 2 largest members -- Verizon and SBC -- said they weren’t part of the last-min. court plea. SBC said late Thurs. it would accelerate bringing wireline to wireless LNP to all customers in all markets by Mon. rather than just the top 100 markets as required by the FCC rules. “We were not a party to their filing at the FCC and we are not at the D.C. Circuit,” an SBC spokesman said. The carrier wrote FCC Chmn. Powell on its plans to implement wireless LNP throughout its 13-state region, regardless of whether those markets were within the top 100. “It’s no secret that SBC would have preferred that the Commission implement intermodal number portability in a competitively neutral manner,” SBC Senior Vp James Smith said. But he said that “disappointment” wouldn’t stand in the way of SBC’s implementing intermodal LNP “both to the letter, and in the spirit, of the new requirements.” SBC has ported nearly 7 million wireline numbers since 1997.

A spokesman for Verizon, which 6 months ago said it and Verizon Wireless were embracing the FCC’s LNP mandates, said: “We're not party to that petition, and we're ready to port on Monday.”

Meanwhile, the FCC continued to hear concerns on how telemarketing rules that barred autodialed solicitation calls to wireless phones could be implemented under LNP. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act bars telemarketers from making calls to most wireless phones. The Direct Mktg. Assn. raised concerns that NeuStar hadn’t established a way to release information on when a wireline number was ported to a wireless phone so telemarketers could be advised of the change (CD Nov 20 p1). The Newspaper Assn. of America (NAA) and the Tribune Co. also cited the impact on telemarketing calls to customers with whom newspapers had a business relationship. In an FCC filing, NAA and Tribune said “specific data identifying wireline numbers ported to wireless numbers is not currently available to newspapers and will not be available by Nov. 24… While the FCC is correct in stating that telemarketers have been prohibited from using autodialers to call cell phones for the last 12 years, it does not recognize that 12 years ago the number of cellphones in use was just a fraction of what it is today.” They asked the Commission to clarify that newspapers could call customers if they had a business relationship with them, even if those customers had ported wireline numbers to mobile phones. They argued that the FCC should rule that “inadvertent calls” placed by autodialers to wireless numbers wouldn’t be enforced, at least initially.

The FCC late Thurs. filed in opposition to the stay request by Central Tex. Telephone Co-op, Kaplan Telephone, Leaco Rural Telephone Co-op and Valley Telephone Co-op. The carriers asked for a stay of parts of the order that required wireless carriers to port numbers across rate center boundaries and in the absence of local interconnection agreements. The FCC argued at the D.C. Circuit that the Nov. 24 deadline for wireless LNP applied only to wireless carriers operating in the top 100 markets, meaning it didn’t require any wireless carrier operating in the rural LECs’ rate areas to roll out wireless LNP Nov. 24. “The rural LECs have not substantiated their allegations that the implementation of wireless number portability when it does reach their areas will irreparably injure them or their customers,” the FCC said.

NARUC filed at the D.C. Circuit late Fri. opposing what it called “last minute wireline industry requests for stays of recent orders” on wireless-to-wireless porting and wireline-to-wireless LNP. NARUC filed in support of the FCC’s wireline-to-wireless LNP order that USTA had challenged. NARUC also had filed against the partial stay petition filed by the 4 rural carriers, which the D.C. Circuit turned down. “This is part of a coordinated wireline local exchange carrier strategy to slow down the implementation of wireline-to-wireless LNP obligations,” NARUC said.

Meanwhile, wireless carriers continued to conduct tests among themselves until about midweek as “dress rehearsals” before wireless LNP rolled out today. On Tues., an application problem arose in intercarrier testing that created 2 hours of downtime, said Michael O'Brien, vp-mktg. for Telecommunications Services Inc. (TSI). TSI handles the “preporting coordination process” for several major carriers, including the exchange and validation of service provider information between carriers when a number is ported. “Last week we had some formalized testing among the carriers and everything went extremely well,” O'Brien said. He said TSI had an internal network outage last Tues. that didn’t affect customer connectivity or other applications. He said that when problems arose during testing it was part of the process of carriers’ understanding changes that were needed before a new system such as LNP went live.

However, an industry source said the problems that arose Tues. meant some wireless carriers couldn’t access TSI’s network all day, while others lacked access for several hours. The final stages of the testing were to be conducted that day and couldn’t be rescheduled by the carriers, which had to focus on getting their systems ready for the Mon. deadline, the source said. The carriers had the benefit of recent rounds of test results, but had other issues that were set for testing, the source said. Separately, an FCC official who received reports on recent tests said the issues that arose Tues. were variously described to the FCC as a network failure or a problem that was fixed fairly quickly. Even in the event of network failures in such situations, sometimes the fix required to get systems running can involve a quick turnaround, the source said. While today is the true test of how LNP works, he said overall testing to date “hasn’t raised any concerns for us,” particularly because it often deliberately involved factors meant to stress a system.

Separately, rural telco Valley Telephone Coop asked the FCC Fri. for a limited waiver and extension of its intermodal porting and pooling obligations as set out in the recent wireline-to-wireless LNP order. Valley asked that the Commission clarify that its porting and pooling obligations were those of a carrier providing service outside the top 100 markets. In the alternative, it asked that the agency waive and extend Valley’s compliance deadline for implementing intermodal LNP in its wireline service area until May 24. Valley said that although its service area was extremely rural, it had received letters from Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS asking that it implement LNP. “Neither Verizon, nor Sprint, currently has an interconnection arrangement or agreement with Valley, nor have they established local numbers, local interconnection facilities or a local point of presence in Valley’s rural service area,” the telco said.