FCC Considers Giving Interconnected VoIP Providers Direct Number Access

The FCC will consider giving interconnected VoIP providers direct access to phone numbers, in a rulemaking notice approved 4-0 Thursday. Outgoing Commissioner Robert McDowell didn’t vote. Wireline Bureau Chief Julie Veach said the item takes “cautious but significant steps” to modernize the commission’s numbering policies. A six-month trial period will give Vonage, and the 14 other interconnected VoIP providers that have filed waiver petitions since 2005, direct access to up to 5 percent of the numbers they currently access through intermediaries.

The NPRM, not released as of our deadline, looks at whether to expand number access to other kinds of non-carriers; seeks data on how each requirement would affect consumers; and seeks comment on whether VoIP providers need to comply with more strict optimization and usage requirements than apply to carriers, said Marilyn Jones, a staffer in the bureau’s Competition Policy Division. The notice also seeks comment on the potential effect on call routing, termination, intercarrier compensation, Internet Protocol interconnection, and number and cost allocation, she said. The NPRM could make “number conservation efforts” more effective, and let providers deploy new technologies, she said.

Commissioner Mignon Clyburn “enthusiastically” supports the item, which contains “meaningful and probing questions” to determine just how much benefit might be achieved by allowing direct access to numbering, she said. Removing the need for VoIP providers to obtain numbers through partners would eliminate “inefficiencies” and barriers to innovation, she said. Now, in the numbering databases, numbers will be specifically associated with the VoIP provider’s name instead of the carrier partner’s name, Veach said. The trial will involve a limited amount of numbers, and Vonage and other participants will need to comply with optimization and monthly reporting requirements, agency officials said. They said Vonage is so far the only VoIP provider to say on the record that it would agree to those and other conditions.

The conditional waiver granted to Vonage “will allow us to identify any problems” with giving VoIP providers direct access, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said: “It will allow us to have a real-time laboratory in which to study the issues” and “inform our process as we chart a course toward more permanent policies.” At Rosenworcel’s recommendation, the bureau will issue a report at the end of the trial, “so that we will have an opportunity to learn from the results before we move on to final rules,” she said.

In addition to the 5 percent of currently existing numbers that VoIP providers in the trial can now access directly, they will be able to get a “very limited number” of new phone numbers, which they can assign themselves, Veach said. That will help make the trials more “robust,” she said. About 145,000 numbers will be available to Vonage, FCC officials said: 125,000 of those are based on the number of subscribers Vonage has now, and up to 20,000 numbers will be available for new subscribers. Other providers would have a proportionate amount of numbers available to them, officials said. To put that number in perspective, more than 1.4 billion numbers have been assigned to service providers, said a bureau spokesman. Of those, about 677 million have been assigned to residential and business end-users, he said.

During the trials, the bureau will monitor problems that might arise in call routing, intercarrier compensation disputes and interconnection, Veach said. “For example, if a VoIP provider has direct access to numbers, it’s one step closer to being able to interconnect directly to another provider without having to go through a CLEC partner.” So the bureau will look at whether that was facilitated and whether it worked properly, she said.

It will be a “large number of numbers, but a small percentage of overall numbers,” said Chairman Julius Genachowski. That’s in case problems arise, he said. Level 3 and others have argued that a technical trial is premature (WID April 8 p2), but “I personally disagree with that and I'm glad we're moving forward,” Genachowski said. The proceeding has been going on for so long, and the record is filled with so many “hypothetical arguments back and forth,” that “it’s become clear that this is the time for a technical trial,” he said. The results of the trial will inform the commission’s decision on “when and how to expand access to numbers,” he said.

NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield is concerned giving VoIP providers direct access to numbering resources “prejudges the entire IP transition work,” she said. The IP transition proceeding is “supposed to be the intellectual and hands-on analysis,” which has so many moving pieces, and Bloomfield thinks that this might be the commission putting the cart before the horse, she said. How will the Vonage trial, and the prospective deregulatory wire center trials proposed by AT&T, interplay with the FCC Technology Transitions Policy Task Force? she asked. “You pull one string, and you don’t even know what you've unraveled."

NARUC is “disappointed” and “confused” by the FCC’s actions, the group said. A rulemaking investigating whether anti-consumer harms might arise is one thing, but “the agency turns this proceeding on its head” by granting Vonage a waiver before even starting the proceeding, said President Philip Jones. That not only prejudges the outcome, but also gives Vonage a “distinct advantage” over its competitors, he said. NARUC Telecom Committee Chairman John Burke said he’s confused about why the FCC would give Vonage such a “huge leg-up on their traditional competitors, who are required to get certification before they can access the numbering system.” Once the numbers are given out during the trial, they “certainly cannot be returned,” he said. “Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you cannot put it back in.”

A further notice of inquiry seeks comment on several issues regarding the commission’s long-term approach to numbering resources, such as whether there will be a continuing need to associate telephone numbers with geography; and the potential impact on public safety, call routing and interconnection, FCC officials said. “We're just dipping our toes in this for the first time,” Veach said. The commission isn’t asking necessarily whether there are “advantages to divorcing” area codes from their geography, but rather whether there are reasons to keep the geographical tie in place, she said. With nomadic services, “the separation’s already happened,” she said.

Commissioners waxed nostalgic about large rotary phones that used to be bolted to many a wall, and sense of dislocation they felt when switching to new area codes. Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood thinks the agency is missing -- or hiding -- the real point. “There’s nothing outdated about public oversight of numbering resources, or about proper FCC procedure either,” he told us. “Maybe today’s item will unleash innovation, to use Chairman Genachowski’s marketing-speak, and maybe it won’t. But the decision should have been made after notice and comment, not by waiving the rules first and asking questions later.” Both Clyburn and Rosenworcel mentioned number portability, which is a “regulatory measure rather than a deregulatory one,” and it benefits consumers, Wood said. “Real change like that comes from having an FCC that puts the public interest first, not one that steamrolls its own rules for the sake of speculative benefits and predetermined outcomes.”