FCC Draft Order Would Grant Some of USTelecom's Forbearance Petition
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is proposing ILECs receive significant forbearance relief, a senior agency official said Tuesday. Wheeler circulated a draft order granting several aspects of a USTelecom petition in docket 14-192 asking the commission to stop applying various regulations to the regional Bells and other local incumbents, the staffer said. Included is relief from certain wholesale obligations that Granite Telecommunications has said are key for competitors serving multioffice businesses in many areas (see 1511120031). The petition is due for a decision by Jan. 4. Wheeler is putting the draft order on the tentative agenda for the FCC’s Dec. 17 meeting, the staffer said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
The draft represents a balanced approach to addressing the USTelecom petition, the staffer said. It would relieve the ILECs of complying with outdated requirements in order to encourage greater broadband deployment while preserving some rules to protect consumers and competition, said the official.
The draft would scrap the ILEC duty to provide a 64 kbps voice-grade channel to competitors on a wholesale basis where the ILECs have deployed fiber and retired copper lines, said the staffer. The official noted it would also eliminate certain Bell unbundling duties (to offer wholesale discounts) under Section 271 of the Communications Act. The draft would "grandfather" existing 64 kbps wholesale service, but not many customers are served through such arrangements, the staffer said.
Granite wasn't persuasive in arguments that the provisions form a “regulatory backstop” that help CLECs secure favorable wholesale agreements with Bells/ILECs, the staffer said. The draft identifies various other ways that competitors can address their wholesale concerns, including through complaints to enforce general telecom safeguards under sections 201 and 202, and through use of ILEC resale offerings under Section 251. Granite has said it wouldn’t be able to serve up to 1.4 million business lines if it lost the "regulatory backstop." It also has said the Section 251 resale access wasn't profitable on its own.
The draft also would eliminate ILEC “equal access” requirements to provide stand-alone long-distance service, including dialing-parity rules, the FCC staffer said. The draft would recognize that some customers continue to use stand-alone long-distance service, and it would prevent ILECs from switching their service without their consent (“slamming”), but ILECs would be invited to propose specific consumer-friendly ways to gain forbearance in the future, the staffer said.
The draft would deny some USTelecom requests for relief, including from eligible telecom carrier requirements to continue providing voice service in some high-cost rural areas. USTelecom had asked the duty be lifted where ILECs decline to take broadband-oriented Connect America Fund subsidy support. ILECs would receive some new funding to support their continuing voice offerings, the staffer said.
Granite, Incompas and USTelecom representatives had no immediate comment.