FCC Hashes Out Details of Special Access Data Request

Commission staff asked AT&T about mass-market unbundled network element (UNE) connections, IRUs, and ILEC pricing data, the telco reported (http://xrl.us/bnvieo). In response to a commission question about the “burden impact of a requirement to exclude mass-market special access connections from the mandatory data request responses,” AT&T said such a requirement would call for “extensive manual review,” increasing the response burden “substantially.” The company said its system records do not contain order codes for UNE loops that might be used to serve mass-market locations as compared to businesses.

Data requests seeking information about competitive fiber routes and building connections must be “broadly framed to elicit complete responses” that reflect “all facilities controlled through IRUs,” AT&T told staffers. It’s “essential” that the commission “resist the latest CLEC efforts to underreport their facilities by identifying only arrangements with initial terms longer than 10 or even 20 years,” AT&T said. Allowing respondents to “conceal” arrangements because the primary term is less than a certain time period would be “patently unreasonable and would perpetuate the data deficit that the mandatory data requests are designed to address,” AT&T said. Regardless of the term of the arrangement, “the competitive significance of that fiber connection is the same,” AT&T said. It said some “data loopholes” would let competitive providers continue to “engage in the ‘hide the ball’ tactics that have characterized their participation in these proceedings for the better part of a decade."

Any IRU must be “properly defined,” CenturyLink told Wireline Bureau officials Thursday (http://xrl.us/bnviiw). The telco urged the commission to require the same level and “granularity of information” from all special access providers, in order to get an “accurate picture of the marketplace.” The telco asked for “sufficient time” to respond to the data request. In a meeting with Level 3, bureau officials suggested a 12-month deadline for the submission of information about the special access markets Level 3 plans to enter, an ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bnvije). The bureau asked for the backbone provider’s opinion of the “proper definition” of an IRU, which would reflect a “true ownership interest in the facilities subject to that IRU,” the filing said.

The FCC should ask special access providers to provide maps showing the geographic area where they plan to offer high-capacity services within the next two years, Verizon executives told bureau officials (http://xrl.us/bnviaw) and an aide to Chairman Julius Genachowski (http://xrl.us/bnvikd). “Where a provider offers service and where it plans to offer service are fundamental to analyzing competition,” they said. The commission should rely on more than a regression model to analyze competition, and should examine information available in marketing materials to determine where competition exists, Verizon said. The commission should also seek data on both facilities-based and non-facilities-based services, and whether providers are competing by purchasing ILEC special access at wholesale rates and reselling it, which could “both discipline ILEC wholesale pricing and indicate that providers are able to compete,” the telco said. “When the data are in, parties will be able to argue about what value to assign non-facilities-based competition versus facilities-based. But the Commission should not foreclose and decide those arguments now by not collecting the data in the first place."

NCTA remains opposed to requests by Verizon and AT&T that competitors submit “detailed information on future deployment plans,” the association told an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Thursday (http://xrl.us/bnvicw). NCTA “questioned the need for detailed pricing information from competitive providers, who necessarily must price their service at rates that are more attractive than those offered by the incumbent providers,” it said. Cable operators are also concerned about the “potentially burdensome nature” of the special access data request, and suggested that the commission mitigate these concerns by “providing respondents flexibility” in how they format their responses, NCTA said.

Bright House Networks urged the commission to make data confidentiality the “guiding principle” as it develops its request for information (http://xrl.us/bnvih5). The cable operator wants to help facilitate collection of relevant data to revise the test for pricing flexibility for price-capped regulated special access carriers, the company told bureau officials. It emphasized that the data collection would “involve among the most sensitive business records of the company.”