Consumer Groups, CLECs Back IP Transition Criteria Proposals, Some Seek More

The Communications Workers of America said the initial comments (see 1510270058) made clear that consumer advocates, state regulators, disability rights groups, public safety associations and utility companies agreed with CWA that the FCC should adopt the eight criteria it proposed for evaluating carrier requests to discontinue, reduce or impair traditional telecom services. The “bright-line criteria” -- network capacity, service quality, device and service interoperability, service for individuals with disabilities, public service answering points and 911 service, cybersecurity, service functionality and coverage -- form a “substitute test” that will provide clarity to carriers and ease the transitions to advanced systems, CWA said. At the same time, the criteria preserve core values of “universal service, consumer protection, public safety and national security and competition,” said CWA, which called for adding affordability as a criterion. The proposals are a “reasonable roadmap for technology transition,” AARP said.

Public Knowledge and other consumer groups said the FCC should reject ILEC “attempts to short-circuit” the discontinuance review process established by Section 214 of the Communications Act. They said “the constrained view” of Section 214 offered by Verizon and others -- that it’s designed to ensure communities and customers aren’t “completely cut off” from communications -- misreads the statute and its goals. “Section 214 is an affirmation of universal service priorities, not a backstop against total disconnection,” the groups said. The act assigned the FCC the “goal of ensuring universal service for all Americans, not simply those who live in geographically convenient areas,” they said.

CLECs urged the FCC to ensure ILECs don’t escape legal duties to provide wholesale access to their networks. The Wholesale Voice Coalition noted the FCC in August required ILECs, upon transitioning from TDM to IP services, to continue to offer CLECs wholesale voice platform services that are “reasonably comparable” to existing services. They said the obligation in an order accompanying the Further NPRM shouldn't sunset upon the effectiveness of an FCC order in the special-access rulemaking. Similarly, Granite Telecom said it wasn’t necessary to set any end-date for the ILEC duty because they could get relief other ways. XO Communications said the FCC should (1) adopt a one-year advance notice requirement for ILECs seeking to discontinue services used as wholesale inputs, and (2) “codify objective good faith criteria” to apply to ILEC-competitor dealings following copper-retirement notification.

State regulatory commissions and agencies from Idaho, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Washington agreed that establishing the criteria was important, and emphasized that “connection quality and persistence, 9-1-1 access service, and services for persons with disabilities” were particularly important. They also said the transition should maintain consumer access to “reliable and affordable communications services and support those competitive services that rely on the underlying facilities.”

Initial comments “overwhelmingly support” the proposed criteria, and also support additional criteria on “affordability, operability, transmission capacity and connection persistence,” and longer advance notice on service discontinuance, said the Utilities Telecom Council. The Alarm Industry Communications Committee said the FCC should back off its proposal to allow ILEC discontinuance applications to “rely on services provided by other providers as an alternative,” especially given “reliability and functionality” issues.

ILECs pushed back, with AT&T saying the “laundry list” of proposed criteria “would substantially impede, not facilitate, the IP transition, by adding cost and delay to the process.” AT&T said the reality was consumers had largely abandoned traditional networks and services. It estimated only 14 percent of housing units in its ILEC states will get TDM voice services from an ILEC by year-end. The vast majority of households already have made the transition to wireless and VoIP services “offered by a host of wireless providers, cable companies, and others, none of which are subject to the regulatory burdens the Commission and its supporters seek to impose on ILECs through the section 214 process,” it said. The customer shifts showed there were “adequate” substitutes for TDM service and “refutes the notion that ILECs retain bottleneck control over communications services, requiring the Commission to micromanage the ILECs’ transition to IP networks and services,” the telco said.

Verizon said the FCC should focus on furthering the transition to “next-generation services, rather than implementing burdensome new requirements on well-established technologies.” Existing processes should be streamlined, said both Verizon and Frontier. Verizon also noted the “safe harbor” proposals it and CenturyLink made. Windstream, a CLEC and ILEC, argued against such safe-harbor proposals, which it said would “truncate” Section 214 reviews and “frustrate the [ILEC] requirement to provide reasonably comparably wholesale alternatives.” Public Knowledge called the safe-harbor proposal “ill-advised.”

CenturyLink said the “unprecedented” discontinuance process proposals “will generate protracted and resource-draining regulatory proceedings.” ILEC critics were seeking “substitute service that is actually superior to the service being discontinued” despite decades of contrary FCC precedent,” it said. “The proposed criteria also would unreasonably shift to ILECs other entities’ costs to accommodate the IP transition -- by incorporating into replacement services all of the functionalities of the service being discontinued -- even if there are more efficient means of providing those functionalities over IP networks.”

NCTA said the commission should clarify that the proposals would apply only to incumbent telco discontinuance applications, though it agreed the process should be streamlined. “To the extent the Commission applies any criteria to an incumbent LEC’s discontinuance application, the burden should be placed on the incumbent LEC to demonstrate that its replacement service meets those criteria, and not on providers that operate in competition with the incumbent LEC," the cable group said. Various rural telco groups said the FCC should “exercise caution” and clarify that rate-of-return rural carriers “would rarely, if ever, be required to submit” discontinuance applications when upgrading to IP services.

“The measures that ILECs characterize as barriers, obstacles, and roadblocks to their transition to new technologies are more properly described as essential safeguards for consumer protection, network reliability, and competitive neutrality,” said The National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates joined by the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel. “Consequently, the FCC should view skeptically ILECs’ attempts to barter relaxed regulatory oversight of their technology transition for purported additional investment in new services.”