Special Access Data Request to Come Later, Gillett Says
The FCC special access order on circulation “lays out a path” for data collection, but the request will appear in a subsequent order, Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett said. The order doesn’t roll back existing grants of pricing flexibility, she told a conference on the transition to an Internet Protocol-based telecom framework. AT&T’s top lobbyist also discussed the transition to an all-IP network at the conference, and blogged (http://xrl.us/bnbvrn) about it. (See story below.) The draft puts new grants on hold while the commission “sets out a path to reform” legacy rules that “increasingly appear ill-suited to the competitive landscape that exists for today,” Gillett said Friday.
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"Virtually all stakeholders agree” that the pricing flexibility triggers, adopted in 1999, are inadequate, she said. For example, the current framework almost completely fails to account for the presence of cable competition in an area: Special access triggers count collocations, but cable doesn’t collocate, and so the rules undercount competition as it’s practiced in 2012 as opposed to 1999, she said. In Manhattan, for example, Verizon cannot get phase II pricing flexibility because cable isn’t counted, she said. “It’s broken in both directions,” Gillett said: This “is really all about metrics” and how best to measure competition. The world didn’t come to pass in a way that was expected in 1999, yet the rules have not been modernized since then, she said. “We have to modernize our rules."
Gillett also emphasized that special access services are used extensively, mentioning one large carrier that buys 160 times more such services than Ethernet connections. AT&T has argued that the commission should be crafting a plan to retire the copper-based services and get businesses on a path toward deploying fiber-based services.
AT&T executives accused the FCC of treating special access inconsistently with its supposed commitment to encouraging a transition to an all-IP infrastructure. “You can’t read about the special access proceeding in there right now, and the things they're contemplating on this issue, and think there’s any consistency in there,” Jim Cicconi, senior executive vice president, told conference-goers. “Do we want Ethernet built to cell towers or not? We're investing to do that really fast. Sprint isn’t! They want access to old stuff that won’t deliver 4G speeds. And they want us to have to not only maintain it forever, but they want the FCC to come in and lower the price. Now do you think that if that happens, they'll ever build anything that is remotely capable of delivering broadband speeds? It’s a muddled policy, and it ultimately requires us to maintain two infrastructures which we can’t afford to do, even with our resources. We're either serious about an IP transition, or we're not.” Sprint declined to comment.
Cicconi praised the commission for creating incentives to investment in the USF proceeding. He encouraged the FCC to adopt similar incentives for companies to shift away from the copper-based DS-1 and DS-3 circuits, and toward fiber-based technologies. “We simply can’t maintain old network stuff -- old TDM infrastructure -- just because some CLEC or some individual may want to use it someday,” Cicconi said. “It makes no sense.” Earl Comstock, telecom consultant and former CEO of Comptel, posited a reason companies might want 1.5 Mbps or 45 Mbps special access circuits, when fiber would offer much more speed. “The answer is very simple,” he said: “DS-1 and DS-3 services are regulated,” and some carriers may perceive a benefit from that.
CEO Randall Stephenson met with Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel Tuesday to discuss AT&T’s special access proceeding, and the telco’s pending pricing flexibility petitions, said an ex parte filing Friday (http://xrl.us/bnbvmo). Stephenson spoke of the “difficult investment environment for wireline infrastructure” and the need to transform the existing wireline infrastructure to “more efficient IP infrastructure.” A path to retire the traditional plain old telephone service TDM architecture is necessary to make continued investment possible, particularly in rural areas, he said.